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REESE    LIBRARY 

Of    THK 

UNIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA. 

Received... 
Accessions  Nto^^T&f          Shelf  No. 


THE 


VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE, 


GROUNDED  IN  PRINCIPLES 


OF 


UNIVERSAL    OBLIGATION 


UNIVERSITY 


HORACE    BUSHNELL 


NEW   YORK. 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER   &    CO.,   124   GRAND   ST 
1866, 


ENTERED  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1865,  by 

CHARLES    SCKIBNER    &    CO., 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States 

for  the  Southern  District  of  New  York. 


ITEREOTYPED   BY  R     H.   HOBB8, 

Hartford,  Conn. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION. 

Pog«. 
No  DOCTRINE  of  Christ's  work  has  been  developed,  that  can  be  said  to 

have  received  the  general  consent  of  the  Christian  world.  But  there 
has  been  a  perceptible  tendency  towards  the  moral  view  of  it.  Re- 
view of  Anselm, ; 13 

PART  I. 

NOTHING  SUPERLATIVE  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE,  OR  ABOVE  THE  UNI- 
VERSAL PRINCIPLES  OP  RIGHT  AND  DUTY. 

CHAPTER  I. — THE  MEANING  OP  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE,  . ! 37 

What  is  to  be  understood  by  vicarious  sacrifice,  38.  "What  it  does  not 
mean,  40.  "What  it  does,  41.  Love  a  vicarious  principle,  42. 
Usits  toquendi  of  the  sacrificial  terms,  43.  How  Christ  takes  our  sins 
upon  him,  46.  Motherhood,  Friendship,  Patriotism,  vicarious,  46. 
Objection  that  God  must  be  unhappy  under  the  burdens  of  love,  51. 
All  good  beings  in  the  principle  of  vicarious  sacrifice,  53.  Experi- 
ence wanted  to  know  this  truth  of  sacrifice,  54. 

CHAPTER  II. — THE  ETERNAL  FATHER  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE,  .  56 
The  fiction  of  a  superlative  merit,  57.  Christ  only  fulfills  in  his  sacri- 
fice standard  obligations,  58.  All  good  beings  in  this  law,  59. 
God  the  same  in  the  Old  and  New  Testament,  60.  No  progress  in 
God,  62.  But  his  government  is  in  the  law  of  progress,  63.  Par- 
tisan cast  of  the  old  religion,  65.  God's  love  suffers  first  by  deten- 
tion, 67.  Christ  is  God,  not  improved  but  more  fully  expressed,  70. 
And  God  is  what  he  shows  him  to  be,  70.  Current  misconceptions 
— mediation,  intercession,  pacification.  71-2.  A  cross  in  God's  per- 
fections from  eternity,  73. 


IV  CONTENTS. 

Page. 

CHAPTER  III. — THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE, 74 

The  Holy  Spirit,  personal,  in  feeling  and  character,  74.  His  work  is  in 
sacrifice,  76.  Scripture  representations,  78.  Takes  Christ's  place 
and  continues  his  work,  79.  Has  his  Gethsemane,  80.  Priestly 
conception  of  his  work,  82.  Only  does  not  meet  us  in  the  senses,  85. 
Authority  of  the  Spirit,  86.  Does  not  renew  us  by  repair,  87.  Our 
invisible  Friend,  89. 

CHAPTER  IV. — THE  GOOD  ANGELS  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE,  ...     91 

All  good  intelligences  must  be  in  the  law  of  sacrifice,  92.      For  they 

are  in  the  love  principle,    93.       Their  sympathy  with  Christ,  94. 

They  minister  in  Christ's  way,  95.       The  Scripture  shows  them  as  in 

sacrifice,  97.       Concerned  for  the  sick  and  the  poor  as  Christ  was,  99. 

CHAPTER  V. — ALL  SOULS  REDEEMED,  TO  BE  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRI- 
FICE,    105 

Vicarious  sacrifice  belongs  to  men  as  to  Christ,  105.  Christ  is  in  it  not 
by  office  but  by  character,  106.  Only  it  carries  humbler  effects  in 
men,  107.  They  are  called  to  this  fellowship  with  him,  108.  How 
this  idea  of  sacrifice  has  been  corrupted,  109.  Disciples  to  suffer  in 
it  for  their  Master's  suffering,  110.  Christ  lays  it  on  them  to  follow 
him,  113.  Sacrifice  is  their  law,  116.  In  it  they  do  follow,  117. 
Not  in  mock  sentiment,  118.  The  Pauline  consciousness,  119. 
Immense  damage  from  the  hiatus  made  between  Christ  and  his  fol- 
lowers, 122-3. 

PART  II. 

TlIE  LIFE   AND   SACRIFICE  OF    CHRIST    IS    WHAT  HE  DOES  TO  BECOME   A 
RENOVATING    AND  SAVING   POWER. 

CHAPTER  I. — USES  AND  RELATIONS  OF  THE  HEALING  MINISTRY,  129 

Christ  is  not  here  simply  to  die,  but  dies  because  he  is  here,  1 30.      What 

he  undertakes  to  accomplish,  132.       The  Healing  of  bodies  comes  first 


CONTENTS.  V 

Page, 
in  his  way,  133.       Disease  goes  with  sin,  healing  with  salvation  134 

His  object  in  the  healing  of  bodies,  136.  His  incarnation  connects, 
him  with  the  fortunes  of  bodies,  13 7.  Souls  and  bodies  fall  to- 
gether, 138.  In  diseases  Chirst  beholds  the  virus  of  sin,  139.  His 
healings  incompatible  with  penal  substitution,  140.  Gloriously  com- 
patible with  the  healing  of  souls,  142.  Practical  value  of  the  heal- 
ings in  analogical  uses,  144.  Types  and  proofs  of  a  supernatural  sal- 
vation, 146.  Partaking  in  the  sacrifice,  shall  we  also  in  the  heal- 
ings? 147. 

CHAPTER  II. — CHRIST'S  OBJECT  is  THE  HEALING  OF  SOULS, 151 

He  is  to  be  our  Regenerator,  152.  How  he  preengages  the  feel- 
ing, 153.  Awakens  the  conscience,  154.  Stands  for  the  exem- 
plar, 155.  The  Scriptures  make  him  a  renewing  power,  156.  None 
the  less  a  Regenerator  that  the  Spirit  is  also,  157.  Revealed  as  such 
in  the  consciousness,  158.  Such  as  deny,  yet  virtually  accept  the 
same  view  of  his  office,  160.  Reclamations  of  lost  Scripture  needed 
here,  162. 

CHAPTER  III. — HE  is  TO  BE  GOD'S  POWER  IN  WORKING  SUCH  RE- 
COVERY,    168 

Two  kinds  of  power,  168.  Christ  to  become  the  moral  power  of 
God,  169.  His  moral  power  is  not  in  the  nature  of  mere  exam- 
ple, 170.  The  moral  power  of  God  is  the  greatness  of  God,  172. 
The  greatest  power  of  God,  173.  Christ  has  the  conception  that  he 
is  to  be  this  power  among  men,  173.  The  ancient  Scriptures  hold 
this  conception  of  the  Messiah,  175.  The  apostles  coming  after  have 
the  same,  177.  And  use  all  most  violent  figures  to  give  their  im- 
pression of  its  efficacy,  180.  The  delay  of  his  coming  was  because 
the  moral  backwardness  of  the  world  afforded  'no  receptivity  for  the 
impression  of  such  power,  182. 

1* 


VI 


CHAPTER  IV.  —  How  3E  BECOMES  so  GREAT  A  POWER,  .......  185 

Mor.tl  power  is  cumulative,  186.  Attribute  power,  absolute,  186. 
Christ  incarnated,  to  obtain  moral  power,  188.  The  "name"  of 
which  the  New  Testament  has  so  much  to  say  is  the  power  he  ob- 
tains, 189.  How  the  apostles  therefore  do  every  thing  in  this 
name,  190.  How  he  obtains  the  name,  191.  Nothing  in  his  name 
at  the  first,  192.  It  is  not  obtained  before  his  ministry,  193.  But 
the  ministry  is  a  beginning  of  the  name,  195.  It  grows  sublime  and 
impressive,  197.  But  he  sometimes  repels,  199.  Sometimes  wears 
a  grotesque  look,  200.  Specially  impressive  in  his  tenderness,  201. 
But  he  baffles  expectation,  202.  And  his  death  takes  away  all  con- 
fidence, 204.  The  power  not  yet  obtained,  205.  But  he  passes  a 
great  crisis  in  his  resurrection,  206.  All  our  impressions  changed 
by  the  revision  that  now  follows,  208.  Now  come  the  effects  of 
the  power,  first  at  the  pentecost,  209.  The  power  goes  on 
increasing  still,  and  will  to  the  end  of  the  world,  211.  How  it  is 
affirmed  by  Scripture,  212.  Why  no  dogmatic  statement  is  possi- 
ble, 213.  It  is  the  power  he  gets  by  the  expression  of  his  whole 
life,  214.  In  what  sense  a  hero,  216.  Socrates  the  nearest  human 
example,  219.  He  is  God  humanized  before  us,  220.  He  at  once 
awakens  guilt  and  draws  confidence,  222.  Chief  element  of  his 
power  is  the  expression  made  of  God's  affliction  for  sin,  223.  Thus 
afflicted  because  he  is  perfect,  224.  Yet  his  beatitude  is  nowise  di- 
minished, 225.  Relations  of  the  agony  and  the  cross  to  his 
power,  226.  Nothing  penal  in  them,  229. 

PART  III. 

TlIE  RELATIONS  OF  GOD'S    LAW  AND    JUSTICE   TO  HIS    SAVING   WORK  IN 

CHRIST. 

CHAPTER  I.—  THE  LAW  BEFORE  GOVERNMENT,  ...............  233 

The  political  analogies  suspected  in  this  application,  and  to  be  cautiously 
employed,  235.      For  this  end  revert  to  the  fact  of  a  law  before  God's 


CONTENTS.  Vii 

Pa 

will,  235.  This  law  absolute,  how  to  be  conceived,  236.  Its  ap- 
plications doubtful,  the  law  itself  power,  237.  Suppose  the  Law  ab- 
solute to  rule  for  a  time  by  itself,  239.  Obedience  to  it  makes  com- 
plete society,  240.  Consequences  when  disobeyed,  241.  "What  now 
will  God  undertake  but  government  and  redemption  together?  243. 
Five  important  conceptions  legitimated,  247.  How  this  general  view 
coincides  with  the  story  of  the  fall,  248.  The  fall  specially  related  to 
the-  law  before  government,  250. 

CHAPTER  II. — INSTITUTED  GOVERNMENT, / 252 

What  is  to  be  understood  by  instituted  government,  252.  It  compre- 
hends law  exacted,  penalties  added,  Providence  and  grace,  253.  Not 
that  God  creates  all  law,  254.  Decalogue  not  fundamental,  255. 
Justice  pertains  only  to  instituted  government  which  contains,  or  is 
co-factor  of)  redemption,  257.  Includes  world-government  as  co- 
factor  with  redemption,  258.  Righteousness  and  Justice  distin- 
guished, 259.  Instituted  government  is  personal,  virtually  a  per- 
son, 260.  Absolute  necessity  of  it,  262.  Dangers  apprehended 
from  the  remission  of  sins,  260.  That  law  becomes  only  advice,  262. 
That  God's  rectoral  honor  will  be  gone,  263.  That  his  righteousness 
will  become  equivocal,  264.  In  short,  that  his  justice  will  appear  to 
be  a  lost  attribute,  265. 

CHAPTER  III. — THE  ANTAGONISM  BETWEEN  JUSTICE  AND  MERCY,  266 
Justice  in  the  scale  of  desert  commonly  misconceived,  268.  The  wrath- 
principle  of  justice  no  law  to  God,  269.  No  priority  in  justice,  as  re- 
spects mercy,  271.  Both  coordinate  and  cooperative,  271.  Factors 
both  in  redemption  itself}  273.  Mercy  works  no  infringement  of 
mercy,  275.  How  the  Scriptures  hold  this  antagonism,  276.  The 
old  and  new  dispensations,  how  related,  279.  God  dispenses  justice 
in  a  way  of  discretion,  280.  And  yet  by  natural  law,  282.  Natural 
law  of  retribution  never  subverted  by  mercy,  283.  For  mercy  only 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 

Page. 

interacts  supernaturally  with  the  laws  of  natural  retribution,  284. 

They  both,  in  fact,  magnify  each  other,  285.  Conversion  wrought 
by  their  joint  action,  286.  Salvation  glorifies  justice,  286.  Justice 
also  vindicates  mercy,  287.  Both  most  honorable  when  working  to- 
gether, 288.  They  even  coalesce  as  the  root  in  the  righteousness  of 
God,  289.  A  fact  in  which  this  is  practically  shown,  291.  Analogy 
in  the  correlation  of  forces,  292.  All  the  compensation  schemes  issue 
in  mock  truths,  293. 

CHAPTER  IV. — THE  LAW  PRECEPT  DULY  SANCTIFIED, 296 

The  vicarious  sacrifice  puts  the  law  precept  in  honor,  298.  Restores  to 
the  precept,  299.  And  restores  the  precept,  300.  And  incarnates 
the  precept,  303.  And  dies  in  obedience  to  the  precept,  305.  Ful- 
filling by  love  and  sacrifice,  the  essence  of  the  precept,  306.  And 
that  as  eternal  obligation,  307.  The  cross,  therefore,  not  optional  but 
obligatory,  309.  The  •  substitutional  function  of  love  perceived  by 
Edwards,  310.  Also  God's  obedience  in  the  sacrifice  by  Anselm  and 
Bellamy,  311.  Christ's  obedience  to  the  Father  is  the  Father's  obe- 
dience to  law,  312.  Immense  honor  paid  thus  to  the  law,  315. 
The  very  law  broken  glorifies  itself  in  organizing  redemption,  317. 
No  objection  that  God's  obedience  in  Christ  to  the  law  was  nothing 
new,  319.  Objected  that,  in  such  a  use  of  the  obedience,  no  surplus 
merit  is  provided  for  us,  320. 

CHAPTER  Y. — LEGAL  ENFORCEMENTS  NOT  DIMINISHED, 322 

It  is   only  for  bad  minds  that  legal  enforcements  are  wanted,   322. 

False  assumption,  that  goodness  alone  will  sufficiently  govern,  323. 

Also  that  retributive  arrangements  are  a  complete  government,  325. 

Christ  unites  both  kinds  of  rnotivity,  327.     Reenforces  the  law  by  hia 

moral  power,  328.      And  therefore  may  by  stronger  penalties,  329. 

The  immense  moral  power  of  judicial  severities  themselves,   330. 

Christ  therefore  denounces  eternal  punishment  and  assumes  the  judg- 


CONTENTS.  ix 

Page. 

ment  of  the  world,  332.       The  doctrine  qualified,  334 ;    by  taking  the 

word  eternal  only  as  a  word  of  practical  finality,  334 ;  by  showing 
the  certain  reduction  of  the  soul  and  its  susceptibilities  under  sin,  335, 
and  even  the  extinction  of  its  highest  powers,  336;  and  by  the  denial 
of  infinite  punishment,  338.  Finite  but  naturally  endless,  340. 
Christ  does  not  give  up  law,  342.  But  is  even  the  first  promulgator 
of  eternal  punishment,  343.  He  has  no  scruple  in  respect  to  the 
doctrine,  344.  Puts  it  in  the  most  appalling  figures,  345.  And 
who  must  he  be  to  be  endured  in  such  teachings?  346,  and  even 
praised  by  such  as  reject  them  ?  348.  The  doctrine  appears  to  be 
even  a  want  of  religious  character,  348,  and  an  intrinsic  element  of 
the  gospel,  350.  He  will  be  the  judge  of  the  world  also  himself,  352. 
The  reason  for  such  judgment,  353.  Called  by  his  followers  the  dies 
irce,  355.  These  enforcements  of  law  sufficient  without  a  satisfaction 
of  justice,  357.  Does  not  by  forgiveness  disturb  the  retribute  order  of 
causes,  359.  Hard  names  will  never  take  away  this  doctrine,  361. 

CHAPTER  VI. — GOD'S  RECTORAL.  HONOR  EFFECTIVELY  MAIN- 
TAINED,    364 

The  New  England  scheme  of  substitution,  365.  No  fault  that  it  turns 
on  expression;  that  is,  abhorrence  expressed,  366.  Abhorrence  no 
equivalent  of  justice,  367.  No  abhorrence  expressed  in  Christ's 
death,  368.  Latent  resumption  still  of  penal  suffering,  369.  The- 
ory of  immutable  justice  considered,  371.  Softened  forms  of  the  doc- 
trine attempted,  372.  Absolute  justice,  how  stated  in  the  satisfaction 
theories,  373.  A  second  statement,  375.  God  exacts  no  justice  of 
Himself,  378,  and  it  would  not  b3  just,  378.  Withheld  from  suffer- 
ing, Christ  would  have  suffered  more,  379.  Righteousness  and  jus- 
tice confounded,  379-80.  Righteousness  is  absolute,  not  justice,  382. 
No  ground  of  concern  for  God's  justice  left,  383.  Christ  also  honors 
God's  justice  by  being  incarnated  into  the  same,  385.  Suffers  the 


X  CONTENTS 

P&g* 
corporate  evil  with  us,  386.      Refusing  to  push  it  aside,  389.      Hero 

is  compensation  if  it  were  wanted,  390.  Burge's  theory  which 
turns  the  effect  of  punishment  on  the  divine  suffering,  392.  Objected 
that  the  Christian  world  is  unanimous  for  compensation,  394.  Also 
that  the  substitutional  terms  of  Scripture  are  not  met,  395.  An  illus- 
tration to  show  the  contrary,  396.  Summing  up  of  three  previous ' 
chapters,  398.  . 

CHAPTER  VII. — JUSTIFICATION  BY  FAITII, 403 

The  moral  view  of  the  sacrifice  supposes  a  consent  of  faith,  403.  And 
hence  justification  by  faith,  404.  But  faith  and  opinion  may  not  co- 
incide, 405.  The  principal  text,  Rom.  iii,  25-6,  discussed,  406.  The 
three  words  righteousness,  just,  and  justifier  of,  all  of  one  root,  406. 
How  these  words  are  used  in  the  Old  Testament,  409.  How  in  the 
New,  411.  Uses  and  conceptions  of  Plato,  412.  Concluded  that 
the  three  words  are  moral,  not  judicial,  in  their  meaning,  415.  "  The 
righteousness  of  God"  not  judicial,  416.  "That  he  might  be  just" 
is  not,  416.  That  "the  justifier  of"  is  not,  418.  Version  of  the 
whole  text  given,  421.  Catholic  and  Protestant  versions  consid- 
ered, 421.  Righteousness  of  God,  how  related  to  justification,  423. 
Christ  not  a  ground  but  a  power  of  justification,  423.  Light  notions 
of  remission,  423.  Three  conceptions  of  the  release  held  by  the 
Scripture,  425.  Justification  has  no  reference,  to  justice,  427.  Ob- 
jected that  the  liabilities  of  justice  still  remain,  429.  Also  that  right- 
eousness condemns  and  repels,  430.  Justification,  the  normal  state 
restored,  431.  Faith,  how  related  to  justification,  434.  Faith 
defined,  435.  Luther  in  justification,  436.  His  head  did  not  un- 
derstand his  heart,  437.  Justification  and  sanctification  not  con- 
founded, 440.  How  related  to  imputation,  442.  Wo  are  also  to 
have  our  righteousness  putatively  in  God,  445. 


CONTENTS.  Xi 

PART  IY. 

SACRIFICIAL  SYMBOLS  AND  THEIR  USES, 

Page. 

CHAPTER  I. — SACRIFICE  AND  BLOOD  AND  THE  LUSTRAL  FIGURES,  449 
The  sacrificial  terms  and  their  interpretation,  450.  The  Hebrew  sacri- 
fices, how  related  to  that  of  the  gospel,  451.  Human  sacrifices  Pa- 
gan, never  Jewish,  452.  The  origin  of  sacrifices,  453.  The  He- 
brew sacrifices  not  to  be  interpreted  by  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  455. 
And  yet  they  are  meant  for  Christian  uses,  456.  Not  types  of  Christ 
to  them  who  worshiped  in  them,  457.  Yet  necessary  as  types  of 
Christian  language,  458.  What  meaning  they  had  to  the  worship- 
pers, 460.  They  made  nothing  of  the  pain  of  the  victims,  460.  In 
what  their  significance  lay,  462.  Ordained  to  be  a  liturgy,  463.  A 
religion  for  the  eyes,  464.  A  transactional  liturgy,  464.  Implicit 
moaning  of  the  unclean  state,  465.  Made  clean  by  sacrifice,  466. 
Spiritual  conceptions  gradually  developed,  466.  In  what  the  power 
of  the  sacrifice  lay,  467.  Their  effect  was  lustral  only,  469.  In 
what  sense  Christ  was  a  sacrifice,  470.  Not  a  literal,  therefore  the 
more  real,  470.  A  nomenclature  for  the  gospel,  472.  Christ  a  sac- 
rifice under  conditions  of  analogy,  473.  No  external  correspond- 
ence, 473.  Christ  called  a  sacrifice  in  respect  of  his  lustral  power,  475. 
Abuses  of  Scripture  texts,  475.  Judicial  figures,  478.  Political 
and  historic  figures,  480.  Commercial  figures,  480.  Natural  fig- 
ures, 481. 

CHAPTER  II.— ATONEMENT,  PROPITIATION,  AND  EXPIATION, 482 

The  two  ruling  conceptions,  Atonement  and  Propitiation,  483  Both 
miscolored  by  expiation,  484.  Expiation  a  wholly  classic  word,  485. 
Expiation  defined,  an  evil  given  to  obtain  the  release  of  an  evil,  486. 
A  pagan  corruption  of  the  Jewish  cultus,  487.  Not  defined  as  above 
but  so  used,  483.  Possible  good  sense  of  expiation,  491.  Not  de- 
manded by  justice  nor  consistent  with  it,  492.  Story  of  Zaleucus,  493. 


Xll  CONTENTS. 

Page. 

Cromwell  answers  George  Fox  in  better  law,  494.      Trinity  excludes 

expiation,  494.  No  trace  of  it  in  the  Scriptures,  496.  Nothing  made 
of  the  victim's  pains,  497.  Expiations  ought  to  be  palpable,  yet  in 
Scripture  are  not,  497.  The  atonements  not  expiations,  497. 
Atonements  often  excluded  expiation,  498.  Expiations  do  not  ap- 
pear where  wo  should  expect  them,  499.  The  requirement  of  the 
heart  against  expiation,  501.  The  uses  of  blood  not  expiatory,  505. 
The  passover  is  not,  506.  The  sacrifices  are  often  only  festal,  507. 
The  sacrifice  of  Job,  508.  The  great  day  of  atonement  clear  of  expi- 
ation, 509.  Conclusion  honorable  to  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  513. 
No  expiation  of  course  in  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  514.  The  power  of 
sacrifice  does  not  require  expiation,  515.  Atonement  resumed  and 
shown  to  be  at-one-ment,  518.  Propitiation  illustrated  by  prevailing 
prayer,  520.  Propitiation  is  by  faith,  522. 

CHAPTER  III. — PRACTICAL  USES  AND  WAYS  OF  PREACHING,  ....  524 
Truth  concerning  Christ,  not  Christ,  524.  Various  kinds  of  preaching 
that  are  inadequate,  525.  The  true  kind  described,  528.  God's  law 
and  justice  to  be  preached  as  by  Christ,  529.  The  facts  of  Christ's  life 
to  be  magnified  in  preaching,  530.  A  great  fault  of  preaching  often 
that  they  are  not,  532.  No  sufficient  gospel  without  the  altar  sym- 
bols, 533.  By  these  only  is  the  gospel  made  objective,  535.  Ob- 
jective terms  a  first  want  of  language,  538.  The  Devil  an  objective 
conception  practically  needed,  539.  The  outgoing  state  secured  only 
by  a  use  of  the  altar  figures,  542.  But  they  are  lost,  it  will  be  felt, 
by  the  abuse  put  upon  them,  543.  How  to  get  back  the  lost  sym- 
bols, 545.  Our  doctrine  ends  where  the  first  preachers  began,  546. 
Here  in  the  altar  forms  is  God's  true  formula,  548.  Let  us  return 
to  God  in  our  confession,  550. 


^ 
UNIVERSITY 


INTRODUCTION. 


IT  will  commonly  be  found  that  half  the  merit  of  an 
argument  lies  in  the  genuineness  of  its  aim,  or  object.  If 
it  is  a  campaign  raised  against  some  principle  or  doctrine 
established  by  the  general  consent  of  ages,  there  will  always 
be  a  certain  lightness  in  the  matter  of  it  that  amounts  to  a 
doom  of  failure.  If  it  is,  instead,  a  contribution  rather  of 
such  help  as  may  forward  the  settlement  of  a  doctrine  never 
yet  fully  matured,  or  at  least  not  supposed  to  be,  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  purpose  may  be  taken  as  a  weighty  pledge  for  the 
solidity  of  the  material.  Nothing,  meantime,  steadies  the 
vigor  and  fixes  the  tenacity  of  an  argument,  like  that  real  in- 
sight which  distinguishes  accurately  the  present  stage  of  the 
question,  and  the  issue  that  begins  already  to  be  dimly  fore- 
tokened. It  quiets,  too,  in  like  manner,  the  confidence  of 
the  public  addressed,  and  steadies  the  patience  of  their  judg- 
ments, if  they  can  discover  beforehand,  that  it  is  no  mere 
innovator  that  asks  their  attention,  but  one  who  is  trying,  in 
good  faith,  to  make  up  some  deficit,  more  or  less  consciously 
felt  by  every  body,  and  bring  on  just  that  stage  of  progress  in 
the  truth,  which  its  own  past  ages  of  history  have  been  stead- 
ily preparing  and  asking  for.  No  investigator  appears,  in 
this  view,  to  be  quite  fair  to  himself,  who  docs  not  somehow 
raise  the  suspicion,  beforehand,  that  a  hasty  judgment  allowed 
against  him  may  be  a  real  injustice  to  the  truth. 


14  INTRODUCTION. 

Under  impressions  like  these,  I  undertook,  at  first,  to  pre- 
pare, and  actually  prepared  for  the  treatise  that  follows,  a  long, 
carefully  studied,  historical  chapter,  showing,  as  accurately  as 
I  was  able,  the  precise  point  of  progress  at  which  we  have 
now  arrived,  as  regards  the  subject  of  it.  In  this  investiga- 
tion, I  was  able,  as  I  believe,  to  make  out  these  two  very  im- 
portant conclusions : 

(1.)  That  no  doctrine  of  the  atonement  or  reconciling  work 
of  Christ,  has  ever  yet  been  developed,  that  can  be  said  to 
have  received  the  consent  of  the  Christian  world. 

(2.)  That  attempts  have  been  made,  in  all  ages,  and  con- 
tinually renewed,  in  spite  of  continually  successive  failures,  to 
assert,  in  one  form  or  another,  what  is  called  "  the  moral  view  " 
of  the  atonement,  and  resolve  it  by  the  power  it  wields  in 
human  character ;  and  that  Christian  expectation  just  now 
presses  in  this  direction  more  strongly  than  ever ;  raising  a 
clear  presumption,  that  the  final  doctrine  of  the  subject  will 
emerge  at  this  point  and  be  concluded  in  this  form.  Proba- 
bly it  may  be  so  enlarged  and  qualified  as  to  practically 
include  much  that  is  valued  in  current  modes  of  belief  sup- 
posed to  be  the  true  orthodoxy,  but  the  grand  ruling  concep- 
tion finally  established  will  be,  that  Christ,  by  his  suffering 
life  and  ministry,  becomes  a  reconciling  power  in  character, 
the  power  of  God  unto  salvation.  Or  if  it  should  still  bo 
said  that  he  reconciles  God  to  men  by  his  death,  that  kind  of 
declaration  will  be  taken  as  being  only  a  more  popular,  object- 
ive way  of  saying,  that  God  is  in  him,  reconciling  men  to 
Himself. 

Having  shown  the  steadily  converging  movement  of  history 
on  this  point,  I  was  promising  myself,  as  an  advantage  thus 
gained,  that  I  should  be  regarded,  in  the  treatise  that  follows, 
rather  as  fulfilling  the  history,  than  as  raising  a  conflict  with 


INTRODUCTION.  15 

it.  And  yet,  on  further  reflection,  I  have  concluded  to  sur- 
render so  great  a  hope  of  advantage  and  sacrifice  the  labor 
I  had  thus  expended.  I  do  it  because  the  history  made  out, 
however  satisfactorily  to  myself,  is  likely  to  be  controverted  by 
others — as  what  matter  of  dogmatic  history  is  not? — and 
then  I  shall  only  have  it  upon  me,  before  the  public,  to  main- 
tain a  double  issue,  first  of  history,  and  then  of  truth ;  when  I 
should  evince  a  confidence  worthier  of  the  truth,  in  staking 
every  thing  on  this  issue  by  itself.  The  result  of  such  a 
canvassing  of  history  was  just  now  indicated,  and  that  must 
be  enough.  Relinquishing  thus  every  adventitious  help  be- 
yond this  mere  suggestion,  I  consent  to  let  the  doctrine  I  may 
offer  stand  by  its  own  inherent  merits. 

At  the  same  time  it  will  be  so  convenient,  in  the  course  of 
my  argument,  to  refer  occasionally  to  Anselm's  really  wonderful 
treatise,  Cur  Dens  Homo,  that  I  am  tempted  briefly  to  review 
the  doctrine  he  gives.  This  treatise  was  the  first  of  all  the 
deliberately  attempted  expositions  of  the  work  of  Christ.  It 
is  the  seed  view,  in  a  sense,  of  the  almost  annual  harvest  that 
has  followed ;  and  as  all  choice  seedlings  are  apt  to  degenerate 
in  their  successive  propagations,  we  are  obliged  to  admit  that 
this  original,  first  form  of  the  doctrine  was  incomparably  bet- 
ter than  almost  any  of  the  revisions,  or  enlarged  expositions 
of  it  since  given. 

It  is  a  great  deal  better,  too,  than  the  multitude  of  these 
theologic  revisions  and  dogmatic  expositions  ever  conceive  it 
to  be.  No  writer  was  ever  more  unfortunate  than  Anselm  is, 
in  the  feeble,  undiscerning  constructions  put  upon  his  argu- 
ment, by  the  immense  following  that  has  accepted  his  master- 
ship. They  take  what  he  says  of  debt,  as  if  it  were  a  matter 
of  book-account  that  Christ  has  come  to  settle ;  or  what  he 
says  of  justice,  as  if  he  were  engaged  to  even  up  the  score  of 


16  INTRODUCTION. 

penalty  ;  or,  what  he  says  of  pay,  as  if  he  had  come  to 
bring  in  some  compensative  quantity  of  suffering  valuable  for 
the  total  amount,  and  not  in  any  sense  valuable  for  the  qual- 
ity or  expression,  by  which  it  may  restore  the  honors  of  God 
infringed  by  disobedience.  His  obedience,  too,  is  taken  as  if  it 
were  a  satisfaction,  not  because  of  the  righteousness  declared, 
but  on  account  of  the  pains  contributed  in  it. 

Passing  by  matters  of  subordinate  consequence,  the  scheme 
of  his  doctrine  is  briefly  this.  Considering  what  sin  is,  he 
finds  it  to  be  "  nothing  else  than  not  to  render  God  his  due. 
The  will  of  every  rational  creature  ought  to  be  subject  com- 
pletely to  the  will  of  God.  This  is  the  debt  [debitum]  which 
both  angels  and  men  owe  to  God,  and  none  who  pays  this 
debt  commits  sin.  This  is  justice,  [justitia]  or  rectitude 
of  will,  which  makes  a  being  just  or  upright ;  and  this  is  the 
sole  and  total  debt  of  honor  which  we  owe  to  God,  and 
which  God  demands  of  us.  He  who  does  not  render  God 
this  honor  due  [debitum]  robs  God  of  his  own,  and  dishonors 
him." — (Lib.  i.  Cap.  xi.) 

How  then  is  the  grand  necessity  to  be  met.  Sin  has  dese- 
crated God  before  the  world,  taken  down  his  public  honor  as 
a  father  and  magistrate,  weakened  his  authority,  robbed  him 
of  his  just  reverence.  What  is  wanted,  then,  is  that  the 
original  debt  or  due  of  obedience  be  made  good ;  that  some 
equal  compensation  be  offered  to  God  or  God's  magistracy, 
for  the  loss  of  that  honor  which  lias  been  taken  away.  "  For 
God's  mere  compassion  to  let  go  sins,  without  any  payment 
of  the  honor  taken  away,  does  not  become  Him.  Thus  to  let 
go  sin  is  the  sam6  as  not  to  punish  it.  Not  to  punish  is  to  let  it 
go  unsubjected  to  order,  [inordinatum]  and  it  does  not  become 
God  to  let  any  thing  in  his  kingdom  go  nnsubjected.  There- 
fore it  is  unbecoming  for  God  to  let  sin  go  thus  unpunished. 


INTRODUCTION.  17 

There  is  another  thing  which  follows,  if  sin  be  allowed  to 
go  unpunished ;  with  God  there  will  be  no  difference  between 
the  guilty  and  the  not  guilty,  which  also  is  unbecoming  to 
God.  Besides,  if  sin  is  neither  paid  for  nor  punished,  it  is 
really  kept  subject  to  no  law.  Injustice,  [unrighteousness]  if 
mere  compassion  lets  go  sin,  is  more  free  than  justice, 
[righteousness]  which  is  very  inconsistent." — (Lib.  i.  Cap.  xii.) 
Every  thing  turns  here,  it  will  be  seen,  upon  the  consideration 
of  what  is  "  becoming,"  or  "  consistent "  in  God  as  a  ruler ; 
what  is  due  to  his  authority  and  public  standing,  not  upon  the 
ground  of  some  absolute  principle  called  justice  in  His  moral 
nature,  which  obliges  Him,  leaving  no  right  of  option,  to  pun- 
ish wrong  by  the  infliction  of  vindicatory  pains.  There  is  no 
semblance  of  such  an  idea  to  be  found  in  His  language.  On 
the  contrary,  he  maintains,  by  a  carefully  framed  argument, 
that  God  has  a  perfect  "  liberty,"  or  right  of  option,  as  regards 
the  matter  of  forgiveness,  restricted  only  by  the  consideration 
of  what  is  becoming,  or  fitting,  or  against  his  dignity,  or 
due  to  his  magisterial  position.  Thus,  when  it  is  argued  that 
even  we  are  required  by  God  himself  to  forgive  our  enemies 
without  satisfaction,  which  makes  it  appear  strange,  or  incon- 
sistent, that  He  also  may  not  do  it,  the  reply  is,  in  effect,  that 
God  is  a  magistrate,  as  we  are  not.  "  There  is  no  inconsist- 
ency in  God's  commanding  us  not  to  take  upon  ourselves 
what  belongs  to  Him  alone  ;  for  to  execute  vengeance  belongs 
to  none  but  Him  who  is  Lord  of  all ;  [Dominus  omnium]  for 
when  earthly  potentates  do  this  with  right,  God  himself  does 
it,  by  whom  they  are  ordained.  What  you  say  of  God's 
liberty,  and  choice,  and  compassion,  is  true  ;  but  we  ought  so 
to  interpret  these  things  as  that  they  need  not  interfere  with 
His  dignity  [magisterial  or  personal.]  For  there  is  no  liberty, 
except  as  regards  what  is  best,  or  fitting  ;  nor  should  that  be 

2* 


18  INTRODUCTION. 

called  mercy  which  operates  any  consequence  unbecoming  to 
God."  He  does  not  throw  himself  upon  some  principle  of 
absolute  philosophy,  which  leaves  no  option  with  God  as  re- 
gards the  matter  of  punishment,  no  counsel  or  deliberative 
reason;  but  there  is  a  why  in  the  question,  he  conceives. 
"  Observe  why  it  is  not  fitting  for  God  to  do  this.  There  is 
nothing  less  to  be  endured  than  that  the  creature  should 
take  away  the  honor  due  the  Creator  and  not  restore  what  he 
has  taken  away.  Therefore  the  honor  taken  away  must  be 
repaid  or  punishment  must  follow  ;  otherwise,  either  God  will 
not  be  just  to  himself,  or  He  will  be  weak  in  respect  to  both 
parties,  and  this  it  is  impious  even  to  think  of." — (Lib.  i.  Cap. 
xii  and  xiii.)  The  whole  question  it  will  thus  be  seen,  is  to 
Anselm,  a  question  of  consequences,  turning  on  the  considera- 
tion of  what  is  "  becoming,"  "  due  to  God's  honor,"  necess- 
sary  to  save  him  from  a  position  of  magisterial  "  weakness." 

Holding  this  view  of  the  satisfaction  needed,  no  inference 
follows  that  Christ  will  make  the  satisfaction  by  his  own  pun- 
ishment or  penal  suffering.  Nothing  is  wanted,  according  to 
Anselm's  statement,  but  some  fit  compensation  made  to  God's 
honor,  such  as  would  be  obtained  by  punishment,  for  punish- 
ment, he  argues,  honors  God  as  being  an  assertion,  by  force, 
of  his  violated  lordship.  "  For  either  man  renders  due  sub- 
mission to  God  of  his  own  will,  by  avoiding  sin  or  making 
payment,  or  else  God  subjects  him  to  himself  by  torments 
even  against  man's  will,  and  thus  shows  that  he  is  Lord  of 
man,  though  man  refuses  to  acknowledge  it.  *  Deprived 
of  happiness  and  every  good,  on  account  of  his  sin,  he  repays 
from  his  own  inheritance,  what  he  has  stolen,  though  he  repay 
it  against  his  will." — (Lib.  i.  Cap.  xiv.)  What  is  wanted  then 
is  the  equivalent  of  this  punishment,  or  what  will  yield  an 
equivalent  honor.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  it  must  be  by 


INTRODUCTION.  19 

punishment — enough  that  it  confers  upon  God's  public  atti- 
tude, by  whatever  method,  as  great  honor  and  authority. 
Indeed  the  language  employed  supposes  an  alternative  between 
satisfaction  and  punishment,  and  not  a  satisfaction  by  punish- 
ment. "  Does  it  seem  to  you  that  he  wholly  preserves  his 
honor  if  he  allows  himself  to  be  so  defrauded  of  it  as  that  he 
should  neither  receive  satisfaction  nor  punishment  ?" — (Lib.  i. 
Cap.  xiii.) 

The  word  "justice"  [justitia]  does  indeed  recur  many  times 
in  this  connection,  but  never  as  denoting  retributive  justice 
under  the  offended  wrath-principle  of  God's  nature.  It  means 
simply  right,  or  righteousness.  As  the  argument  goes,  justice 
comes  into  view  as  recalling  the  principle  of  rectitude.  It 
does  not  speak  of  what  is  due  to  wrong  retributively  consid- 
ered, but  of  what  is  due  to  God  as  the  being  wronged,  what 
is  needed  to  restore  his  violated  honor.  Indeed  the  idea  of  a 
penal  suffering  in  Christ,  and  a  satisfaction  made  thereby  to 
retributive  justice,  is  expressly  rejected  as  a  thing  too  revolt- 
ing to  be  thought  of.  "  Where  is  the  justice  [righteousness] 
of  delivering  to  death  for  a  sinner,  a  man  most  just  of  all 
men  ?  What  man  would  not  be  condemned  himself  who 
should  condemn  the  innocent  to  free  the  guilty  ?" — (Lib.  i.  Cap. 
viii.)  It  is  not  clear  that  the  word  justice  [justitia]  is  used 
by  Anselm  in  a  single  instance  with  a  penal  significance,  or  in 
the  sense  of  retributive  justice.  It  might  seem  to  be  so  used, 
when  it  is  asked — "  If  he  allowed  himself  to  be  slain  for  the  sake 
of  justice,  [propter  justitia]  did  he  not  give  his  life  for  the 
honor  of  God"— (Lib.  ii.  Cap.  xviii.,  b.)  But  he  means  here 
only  what  he  has  before  expressed,  when  saying  that  Christ 
"  suffered  death  of  his  own  will,  on  account  of  his  obedience 
in  maintaining  [justitia]  righteousness." — (Lib.  i.  Cap.  ix.) 
In  the  next  following  chapter,  (Cap.  x.)  he  does  once  employ 


20  INTRODUCTION. 

the  word  poenam,  when  speaking  of  the  death  of  Christ,  but 
he  plainly  enough  means  by  it,  not  punishment,  but  simply 
bad  or  suffering  liability,  and  that  he  came  into  such  liability 
there  is  no  doubt.  Besides,  it  may  be  seen  how  profoundly 
revolting  this  idea  of  punishment,  laid  upon  the  Son,  is  to 
him,  when  he  exclaims,  in  this  same  chapter — "  Strange  thing 
is  it,  if  God  is  so  delighted  with,  or  so  hungers  after,  the 
blood  of  the  innocent,  that,  without  his  death,  he  will  not,  or 
can  not,  spare  the  guilty !" 

Retributive  justice  then,  or  penal  suffering,  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  supposed  satisfaction.  But  the  satisfaction  to 
God's  honor  turns  wholly,  we  shall  see,  on  the  matter  of 
Christ's  obedience — obedience  unto  death.  The  conception 
is  that  he  comes  into  the  world,  not  simply  to  be  murdered,  or 
as  being  commanded  of  the  Father  to  die,  but  that,  having  a 
specially  right  work  laid  upon  him  by  the  Father,  he  is  able 
rather  to  die  for  it  than  to  renounce  it ;  conferring  thus  upon 
the  Father  a  superlative  honor,  according  to  the  righteous 
tenacity  of  his  sacrifice.  The  point  is  stated  carefully  by 
Anselm,  who  says  (Lib.  i.  Cap.  ix.)  "we  must  distinguish 
between  what  he  did,  obedience  requiring  it,  and  what  he  suf- 
fered, obedience  not  requiring  it,  because  he  adhered  to  obe- 
dience"— that  is  to  the  principle  of  right  or  well-doing, 
which  is  fundamental  with  God  in  all  things.  Hence  the 
great  honor  of  such  obedience.  "  God  did  not  therefore  com- 
pel Christ  to  die,  but  he  suffered  death  of  his  own  accord,  not 
yielding  up  his  life  as  an  act  of  obedience  to  the  Father,  but 
on  account  of  his  obedience  [to  first  principle,]  in  maintaining 
right  [justitla ;]  for  he  held  out  so  persistently,  that  he  met 
death  on  account  of  it." — (Lib.  i.  Cap.  ix.)  The  immense 
value  then  of  his  death,  or  the  satisfaction  made  to  God's 
honor,  consists  in  the  luster  of  his  righteousness,  [justitia] 


INTRODUCTION.  21        « 

,t*>  m******-  t          - 

showing  all  created  minds  what  homade  even  the  uncreated  Son 
bears  to  the  sovereign  law-principle/violated  by  transgression. 
At  points  farther  on,  this  very  simple  and  beautiful  account 
of  the  supposed  satisfaction  appears  to  be  a  little  clouded  or 
obscured.  It  appears  to  be  said  that  the  satisfaction  turns 
more  on  the  death,  and  less  on  the  obedience.  But  here  it  will 
be  seen,  he  is  only  saying  that  simple  obedience,  so  as  to  be 
in  God's  will,  is  not  enough ;  it  must  be  such  a  volunteering  in 
Christ,  or  obedience  earned  to  such  a  point  of  sacrifice,  that 
he  dies,  when  nowise  subject  to  death  on  his  own  account. 
"  If  we  say  that  he  will  give  himself  to  God  by  obedience,  so 
as,  by  steadily  maintaining  right,  [justitia]  to  render  himself 
subject  to  His  will,  this  will  not  be  giving  what  God  does  not 
require  of  him,  for  every  rational  creature  owes  this  obedience 
to  God.  Therefore  it  must- be  in  some  other  way  that  he 
gives  himself,  or  something  from  himself  to  God.  Let  us  see 
whether  it  may  not  perchance  be  the  laying  down  of  his  life, 
or  the  delivering  up  of  himself  to  death  for  God's  honor. 
For  this  God  will  not  require  of  him  as  a  debt,  for  since  he  is 
no  sinner  he  is  not  bound  to  die.  Let  us  see  how  this  accords 
with  reason.  If  man  sinned  with  sweet  facility,  is  it  not  fit- 
ting that  he  make  satisfaction  with  difficulty  ?  If  he  is  so 
easily  vanquished  by  the  devil,  that,  by  sinning,  he  robs  God 
of  his  honor,  is  it  not  right  that,  in  satisfying  God  for  his  sin, 
he  overcome  the  devil  for  God's  honor,  with  as  great  diffi- 
culty I  Now  nothing  can  be  more  difficult  for  man  to  do  for 
God's  honor,  than  to  suffer  death  voluntarily,  when  not  bound 
by  obligation."— (Lib.  ii.  Cap.  xi.)  Is  it  then  the  difficulty, 
the  expense,  the  death,  that  satisfies  God's  honor  ?  No ;  but 
it  is  the  sublime  rectitude  of  the  Son,  displayed  and  proved  by 
so  great  pertinacity.  Mere  difficulties  borne  do  not  help  God's 
honor,  but  the  principle  of  devotion  for  which  they  are  borne 


22  INTRODUCTION. 

does  help  it.  Besides,  Christ  did  not  come  into  the  world,  ac- 
cording to  Anselm  in  passages  already  cited,  just  to  suffer  and 
die,  but  only  to  be  in  the  work  for  which,  or  on  account  of 
which,  he  sjiould  die.  If  then  the  dying  itself,  as  many  say, 
makes  the  satisfaction,  it  becomes  a  clear  inference  that  he  did 
not  come  to  make  the  satisfaction  but  to  do  the  work,  and 
that  what  is  taken  so  often  to  be  the  main  point  accomplished 
is  only  an  accident,  after  all,  of  his  mission. 

Again,  two  chapters  farther  on,  where  it  is  considered  how 
great  value  the  satisfaction  offered  has,  he  ceases  to  speak  of 
the  death  and  begins  to  dwell  on  the  person.  No  man,  he 
conceives,  would  knowingly  kill  that  person  to  preserve  the 
whole  creation  of  God.  "He  is  far  more  a  good,  therefore, 
[since  he  outweighs  the  creation  of  God]  than  sins  are  evils. 
And  do  you  not  think  that  so  great  a  good,  in  itself  so  lovely, 
can  avail  to  pay  for  the  sins  of  the  world  ?  Yes,  it  has  even 
infinite  value." — (Lib.  ii.  Cap.  xiv.)  As  if  it  were  the  person 
given  up  to  God  that  paid  for  the  sins.  Whereas  he  only 
means,  by  the  so  great  person,  the  death  of  the  person,  and 
then  again,  by  the  death  of  the  person,  that  obedience  which 
was  proved  by  his  death,  and  confers  the  tribute  of  honor  that 
is  needed  to  resanctify  the  violated  honor  of  God. 

The  construction  I  have  given  to  Anselm's  doctrine,  in  this 
general  outline,  I  am  happy  to  add,  has  the  sanction  of  a 
scholar  in  as  high  authority  as  Neander.  He  says,  "  Anselm's 
doctrine  of  satisfaction  certainly  included  in  it  the  idea  of  a 
satisfactio  activa,  the  idea  of  a  perfect  obedience,  which  was 
required  in  order  to  satisfaction  for  sin.  To  the  significance 
of  Christ's  offering  in  the  sight  of  God,  necessarily  belongs 
also  the  moral  worth  of  the  same.  Far  from  Anselm,  how- 
ever, was  the  idea  of  passive  obedience,  the  idea  of  a  satisfac- 
tion by  suffering,  of  an  expiation  by  assuming  the  punishment 


INTRODUCTION.  23 

of  mankind;  for  the  satisfaction  which  Christ  afforded  by 
what  he  did,  was  certainly,  according  to  Anselm's  doctrine,  to 
be  the  restoration  of  God's  honor  violated  by  sin,  and  by  just 
this  satisfaction,  afforded  to  God  for  mankind,  was  the  remis- 
sion of  sin  to  be  made  possible." — (History,  Vol.  iv.  p.  300.) 

It  is  certainly  most  remarkable,  and  most  honorable  to  the 
Christian  sagacity  of  this  ancient  father  of  the  church,  that 
he  was  able,  as  a  pioneer  of  doctrine  concerning  this  profound- 
ly difficult  subject,  to  make  out  an  account  of  it  which  shocks 
no  moral  sentiment,  and  violates  no  principle  of  natural 
reason,  as  almost  all  the  doctors  and  dogmatizing  teachers 
have  been  doing  ever  since.  We  may  think  what  we  please 
of  his  argument,  as  a  true  and  sufficient  account  of  the  sub- 
ject matter,  but  we  can  not  be  revolted  by  it. 

It  was  the  principal  misfortune  of  Anselm,  that  he  was  too 
much  afraid  of  looking  on  the  Gospel  of  the  incarnation  as 
having  its  value,  or  saving  efficacy,  under  laws  of  expression. 
The  fact^form  pictures  of  the  life  and  suffering  of  Christ  were 
good  enough  symbols  to  him,  doubtless,  of  God  and  his  love, 
but  the  pictures  wanted  something  more  solid  back  of  them, 
he  conceived,  to  support  them — "  for  no  one  paints  in  water 
or  in  air,  because  no  traces  of  the  picture  remain  in  them. 
Therefore  the  rational  existence  of  the  truth  must  first  be 
shown — I  mean  the  necessity  which  proves  that  God  ought 
to,  or  could  have,  condescended  to  those  things  which  we 
affirm.  Afterwards  to  make  the  body  of  the  truth,  so  to 
speak,  shine  forth  more  clearly,  these  portrait  figures  which 
are  pictures  in  a  sense  of  truth's  body,  are  to  be  displayed." — 
(Lib.  i.  Cap.  iv.)  He  has  no  conception  that  expression  is 
its  own  evidence.  He  must  make  a  "  solid  foundation"  by 
something  schemed  and  reasoned,  else  there  is  nothing  to 
authenticate  the  gospel  facts,  and  show  how  it  is  that  men's 


24  INTKODUCTION. 

hearts  are  at  all  authorized  to  be  affected  by  them,  as  the  ex- 
press images  and  true  revelations  of  God.  He  had  no  esthetic, 
or  esthetically  perceptive  culture.  Truth  did  not  lie  in  what 
ho  might  perceive,  but  in  what  he  might  conclude  by  some 
process  of  deduction.  Cribbed  in  thus,  and  cramped  by  the 
inexorable  bars  of  his  over-logical  training,  he  could  not  think 
of  a  gospel  operating  simply  by  the  expression  of  God,  and 
being  only  what  is  expressed  by  the  shining  tokens  of  love 
and  sacrifice  ;  it  must  be  something  more  scientific,  something 
to  be  stiffly  reasoned  under  the  categories  and  by  the  closely 
defined  methods.  The  result  was  that  his  truly  great  soul 
was  rather  narrowed  than  widened  into  his  subject,  and  his 
subject  narrowed,  in  turn,  to  the  closely- stinted  measures 
of  his  method. 

For  this  indeed  is  the  inevitable  fruit  and  doom  of  all 
attempts  to  logically  reduce  and  dogmatize  spiritual  subjects 
— the  method  itself  is  only  a  way  of  finding  how  great  truths 
may  be  made  small  enough  to  be  easily  handled.  The  defini- 
tions operate  astringently,  taking  some  one  incident  or  quality, 
for  many  and  various,  and  so  getting  the  matters  defined  into 
such  thimbles  of  meaning  as  can  be  confidently  managed.  Ac- 
cordingly it  will  be  always  seen,  that  one  who  leads  in  a 
dogmatic,  or  closely  defined  exposition  of  some  doctrine,  is 
gathering  his  mind,  as  it  were,  into  a  precinct  within  itself, 
and  that,  while  he  is  putting  every  thing,  as  he  conceives,  into 
the  solid,  scientific  form,  he  is  all  the  while  giving  indications, 
in  the  manner  and  matter  of  his  argument,  of  an  immense 
outside  wealth  of  sentiment  and  perception,  nowise  reducible 
under  the  scheme  of  his  dogma. 

Thus,  whoever  reads  the  arguments  of  Athanasius  for  his 
doctrine  of  Trinity,  will  see  that  his  mind  is  touching  some- 
thing, every  moment,  outside  of  his  doctrine ;  some  figure, 


INTRODUCTION.  25 

image,  symbol,  analogy,  comparison,  which  is,  after  all,  to 
him,  the  truth  of  his  truth,  and  wider,  and  richer,  and  more 
vital  than  his  defined  statement.  And  so  it  is  with  Anselm 
in  the  present  instance.  He  speaks,  for  example,  at  the  open- 
ing of  his  subject,  (Lib.  i.  Cap  i.  and  ii.)  as  if  it  were  the 
great  matter  of  the  Gospel  that  Christ  has  "  restored  life  to 
the  world ;"  "  assumed  the  littleness  and  weakness  of  human 
nature  for  the  sake  of  its  renewal."  And,  beyond  a  question, 
this  restoring,  this  renewal  of  life,  was  to  him  the  main  pur- 
pose and  point  of  the  Gospel.  But  he  makes  out  still  a 
theory,  or  dogmatized  scheme  of  the  incarnate  life  and  pas- 
sion, that  carries  nothing  to  that  point.  Every  thing  might 
be  done  that  he  describes  for  the  restoration  of  God's  honor, 
and  the  matter  of  "  restored  life  "  or  the  "  renewal  of  human 
nature,"  be  still  untouched ;  nay,  for  aught  that  appears,  it 
might  be  quite  impossible.  Indeed  it  may  even  yet  be  a  ques- 
tion, whether  Christ  is  to  be  any  actual  deliverer  and  regen- 
erator at  all. 

But  the  most  remarkable  instance  of  all,  to  illustrate  the 
detaining  and  restrictive  power  of  a  dogmatizing  effort,  will 
be  found  in  the  fact  that  Anselm,  so  many  times  over  in  the 
course  of  his  argument,  strikes  the  really  grand,  all-containing 
matter  of  the  gospel  and  falls  directly  back  as  often,  into 
his  theory ;  only  half  perceiving,  apparently,  the  immense 
significance  of  what  he  had  touched.  Thus  he  brings  out  his 
argument  upon  the  very  chilling  and  meager  conclusion,  that 
inasmuch  as  Christ  has  paid  to  God,  in  his  death,  what  was 
not  due  on  his  own  account,  God  must  needs  give  him  a 
reward  for  the  overplus;  and  then,  as  he  can  not  do  any  thing 
with  his  reward  personally,  by  reason  of  his  infinite  sufficiency, 
he  may  very  naturally  ask  the  reward  to  be  put  upon  some- 
body else,  and  why  not  upon  the  sinners  of  mankind  ?  "  Upon 

3 


26  INTRODUCTION. 

whom  would  be  more  properly  bestowed  the  reward  accruing 
from  his  death,  than  upon  those  for  whose  salvation,  as  right 
reason  teaches,  he  became  man,  and  for  whose  sake,  as  we 
have  already  said,  he  left  an  example  of  suffering  death,  to 
preserve  holiness.  For  surely  in  vain  will  men  imitate  him,  if 
they  be  not  also  partakers  of  his  reward.  Or  whom  could 
he  more  justly  make  heirs  of  the  inheritance  which  he  does 
not  need,  and  of  the  superfluity  of  his  possessions,  than  his 
parents  and  brethren?" — (Lib.  ii.  Cap.  xix.) 

What  a  conception  of  the  self-sacrificing  love  of  Christ  that, 
after  all,  he  quite  "  properly  "  passes  over  to  sinners  "  the  super- 
fluity "  of  his  rewards !  And  yet  the  worthy  father  was  look- 
ing at  the  time  distinctly  on  the  way  Christ  will  get  hold  of 
transgressors  to  regenerate  their  nature,  after  he  has  evened 
their  account  with  God.  This  mighty  something,  this  all- 
quickening  life,  which  an  apostle  calls  "the  power  of  God 
unto  salvation,"  and  evidently  thinks  to  be  the  very  matter  of 
the  Gospel — he  is  feeling  after  it,  we  can  plainly  enough  see, 
but  his  dogmatizing  effort  holds  him  in  so  stringently  that, 
instead  of  launching  out  into  the  grand,  all-significant,  moral 
view  of  Christ,  as  being  come  into  the  world  to  be  the  power 
of  God  on  souls,  and  so  the  Quickener  of  their  life,  puts  for- 
ward only  these  two  very  thin,  but  painfully  suggestive  words, 
"  example"  and  "  imitation,"  and  is  by  these  exhausted  ! 

Again,  twice  before,  he  had  been  coasting  round  this  point, 
as  if  some  loadstone  drew  his  vessel  thither.  Thus,  when 
showing  how  Christ  paid  God's  violated  "honor,"  by  his 
death,  because  he  died  as  being  under  no  debt  of  obligation 
on  his  own  account,  he  goes  on  to  add,  what  has  no  connec- 
tion whatever  with  his  point — "  Do  you  not  perceive  that, 
when  he  bore,  with  gentle  patience,  the  insults  put  upon  him, 
violence  and  even  crucifixion  among  thieves,  that  he  might 


INTRODUCTION.  27 

maintain  strict  holiness,  by  this  he  set  men  an  example,  that 
they  should  never  turn  aside  from  the  holiness  due  to  God,  on 
account  of  personal  sacrifice  ?  But  how  could  he  have  done 
this,  had  he,  as  he  might  have  done,  avoided  the  death 
brought  upon  him  for  such  a  reason  ?" — (Lib.  ii.  Cap.  xxiii.) 

In  the  other  instance  referred  to,  he  seems  just  upon  the 
verge  of  breaking  out  through  the  shell  of  his  dogma  and 
his  speculated  reasons,  into  the  broad  open  field  of  what  is 
called  "  the  moral  view  "  of  the  subject,  to  see  in  Christ  what 
is  more  than  "  example,"  the  transforming  efficacy  of  God. 
Thus  he  testifies  again — "  There  are  also  many  other  reasons 
why  it  is  peculiarly  fitting  for  that  man  [Christ]  to  enter  into 
the  common  intercourse  of  men,  and  maintain  a  likeness  to 
them,  only  without  sin.  And  these  things  are  more  easily 
and  clearly  manifest  in  his  life  and  actions  than  they  can  pos- 
sibly be,  by  mere  reason  without  experience.  For  who  can  say 
how  necessary  and  wise  a  thing  it  was  for  him  who  was  to 
redeem  mankind,  and  lead  them  back  by  his  teaching  from 
the  way  of  death  and  destruction  into  the  path  of  life  and 
eternal  happiness,  when  he  conversed  with  men,  and  when  he 
taught  them  by  personal  intercourse,  to  set  them  an  example 
himself  of  the  way  in  which  they  ought  to  live  ?  But  how 
could  he  have  given  this  example  to  weak  and  dying  men, 
that  they  should  not  deviate  from  holiness  because  of  injuries, 
or  scorn,  or  tortures,  or  even  death,  had  they  not  been  able  to 
recognize  all  these  virtues  in  himself." — (Lib.  ii.  Cap.  xi.) 

It  is  difficult  not  to  be  greatly  affected  by  this  almost  dis- 
covery of  Anselm ;  for  his  mind,  as  we  can  plainly  see,  labors 
here  with  a  suspicion  that  there  is  a  practical  something  "  in 
the  life  and  actions  "  of  Christ  that  is  not  comprehensible  by 
"  reason,"  or  by  the  logical  methods  of  theory  apart  from  ex- 
perience ;  and  "  who,"  he  asks,  "  can  say  how  necessary  "  this 


28  INTRODUCTION. 

divine  something  is  in  restoring  men  to  God  ?  How  very 
near  to  another,  less  speculative,  and  more  complete  solution 
of  the  Cur  Deus  Homo,  did  this  great  father  of  the  church 
here  come  !  The  gate  stood  ajar  and  he  looked  in  through 
the  opening,  but  could  not  enter. 

It  should  justly  be  said  for  him,  however,  that  there  is 
nothing  very  peculiar  in  the  detention  he  suffers  at  this  point. 
In  one  way,  or  another,  the  gospel  teachers  appear  to  have 
been  trying  every  where  and  in  all  the  past  ages,  if  not  con- 
sciously, yet  unconsciously,  to  get  beyond  their  own  doctrine, 
and  bring  out  some  practically  moral-power  view  of  the 
cross,  more  fruitful  and  sanctifying,  than  by  their  own  particu- 
lar doctrine,  it  possibly  can  be.  Occasionally  the  attempt  has 
purposely  and  consciously  been  to  adjust  something,  or  make 
out  some  formal  account  of  Christ,  that  would  turn  the  whole 
significance  of  his  incarnate  mission  upon  the  power  to  be 
exerted  in  character ;  showing  directly  how,  or  by  what  means, 
it  was  to  be  and  is  that  power.  The  very  coarse,  and,  to  us, 
wild  looking  doctrine  that  Anselm  exploded,  and  that  held 
the  church  for  so  many  ages  before  his  time,  representing 
Christ  as  dying  in  a  conflict  for  us  with  the  devil,  or  as  a  ran- 
som paid  to  the  devil,  was  probably  nothing  but  a  running 
down  into  literality  and  effoeteness  of  meaning,  of  those  flam- 
ing conceptions,  under  which  Christ's  power  over  evil  in  our 
fallen  nature,  was  originally  asserted.  Faith  began  to  glory 
in  the  casting  down  of  the  devil  by  the  cross.  This  was 
gradually  converted  by  repetition  into  a  doctrine  of  the  under- 
standing. Then,  by  the  unthinkingness  of  that  and  reitera- 
tions continued,  the  dogmatic  crudity  was  consummated  and 
Christ  became  a  ransom  paid  to  the  devil.  After  Anselm 
also  comes  a  long  roll  of  teachers,  reaching  down  to  our  own 
time,  who,have  it  as  their  endeavor,  more  or  less  distinctly,  to 


INTRODUCTION.  29 

unfold  some  conception  of  the  cross,  that  will  make  it  a  salva- 
tion by  its  power  on  life  and  character.  In  this  line  we  have 
Abelard,  Hugo  of  St.  Victor,  Robert  Pulleyn,  Peter  Lombard, 
Wycliffe,  and  Wessel,  and  Tauler;  and,  closer  to  our  own 
time,  John  Locke,  and  Dr.  I.  Taylor,  Kant,  De  Wette,  Schleier- 
macher,  and  others,  too  numerous  to  mention — all  strangely 
unlike  in  their  conceptions,  and  as  unequal  as  possible  in  their 
title  to  success. 

But  the  most  impressive  thing  of  all,  in  the  history  of  this 
subject,  is  the  fact  to  which  I  just  now  alluded ;  viz.,  the  man- 
ifest difficulty  experienced  by  the  adherents  of  judicial  satis- 
faction under  any  form,  whether  of  Anselm,  or  of  the  Prote- 
stant confessions,  or  even  of  the  Romish,  in  keeping  themselves 
practically  in,  or  under,  their  doctrine.  Maintaining  it  most 
stringently,  or  even  with  a  bigot  zeal,  they  still  can  not  practi- 
cally stay  in  it,  but  they  turn  away,  as  often  as  they  can,  to 
preach,  or  fondle  themselves  in,  the  dear  luxury  of  texts  out- 
side of  their  confession ;  such  as  "  The  love  of  Christ  con- 
straineth  us,"  "  God  commendeth  his  love,"  "  The  serpent  lifted 
up,"  "  Beholding  as  in  a  glass,"  "  Christ  liveth  in  me,"  and  a 
hundred  others ;  traveling  over,  in  this  manner,  as  it  were, 
another  and  really  better  gospel  than  that  of  their  confession ; 
quite  unconscious  of  the  immense  wealth  they  are  finding  that 
is  wholly  ignored  by  it.  Even  when  they  preach,  in  rugged- 
est  argument,  their  doctrine  of  penal  sacrifice  and  satisfaction, 
asserting  the  wrath  that  burns  inextinguishably  till  it  finds  a 
victim,  they  will  not  be  satisfied  till  they  have  gotten  some 
kind  of  soul-power  either  out  of  their  doctrine,  or  most  like- 
ly from  beyond  it.  Tacitly  they  do  all  hold  to  the  fact  that 
Christ  is  here  to  be,  and  ought  to  be,  and  can  be  duly  hon- 
ored only  when  he  is  made  to  be,  a  softening,  illuminating,  con- 
vincing, or  somehow  transforming  and  sanctifying  power. 

3* 


30  INTRODUCTION. 

After  all,  the  great  toil  of  their  ministry  is  so  to  conceive  Christ 
as  to  speak  worthily  of  him  in  the  matter  of  his  life,  and  get 
the  blessing  out  of  him  for  lost  men  that  is  so  richly  garnered 
in  him.  The  confession  is  universally,  that  whatever  preacher 
fails  in  this,  fails  utterly. 

But  why  is  this  ?  If  Christ  has  simply  died  to  even  up  a 
score  of  penalty,  if  the  total  import  of  his  cross  is  that  God's 
wrath  is  satisfied,  and  the  books  made  square,  there  is  cer- 
tainly no  beauty  in  that  to  charm  a  new  feeling  into  life ;  on 
the  contrary  there  is  much  to  revolt  the  soul,  at  least  in  God's 
attitude,  and  even  to  raise  a  chill  of  revulsion.  It  will  not 
pacify  the  conscience  of  transgression ;  first,  because  there  is 
no  justice  in  such  kind  of  suffering ;  and  next,  because,  if  there 
were,  such  a  death  of  such  a  being  would  only  harrow  the 
guilty  soul  with  a  sense  of  condemnation  more  awful.  It 
might  be  imagined  that  such  a  transaction  would  make  a 
strong  appeal  of  gratitude,  and  exert  great  power  in  that  man- 
ner over  character,  and  yet  gratitude  is  precisely  that,  which 
souls  under  sin  are  least  capable  of,  and  especially  when  the 
claim  is  grounded  in  reasons  so  spiritual  and  so  galling,  every 
way,  in  the  form.  No,  the  power  which  is  so  continually 
sought  after  in  the  unfolding  and  preaching  of  the  cross — that 
which,  to  every  really  Christian  preacher,  is  the  principal  thing 
— is  not  in,  or  of,  any  consideration  of  a  penal  sacrifice,  but  is 
wholly  extraneous ;  a  Christ  outside  of  the  doctrine,  dwelling 
altogether  in  the  sublime  facts  of  his  person,  his  miracles  and 
his  passion. 

And  here  precisely  is  the  reason  why  there  is  so  little  con- 
tent in  the  dogmatic  solutions  of  penal  atonement ;  why  also 
the  attempts  to  present  the  gospel  on  its  moral  side,  by  a  par- 
tially defined  statement,  or  theory,  seem  to  fall  short  and  yield 
in  general  so  little  satisfaction.  It  is  just  because  the  whole 


INTKODUCTION.  31 

Christ,  taken  as  lie  is,  makes  up  the  gospel,  fills  out  the 
power,  and  that  no  summary  more  comprehensive  can  do 
more  than  hint  the  purpose  and  manner  of  it.  There  is  no 
example  of  mortal  conceit  more  astounding,  if  we  could  only 
see  the  matter  with  a  proper  intelligence,  than  the  assumption 
that  the  import  of  Christ's  mission  can  be  fairly  and  suffi- 
ciently stated  in  a  dogma  of  three  lines.  The  real  gospeN  is 
the  Incarnate  Biography  itself,  making  its  impression  and  work- 
ing its  effect  as  a  biography — a  total  life  with  all  its  acts,  and 
facts,  and  words,  and  feelings,  and  principles  of  good,  grouped 
in  the  light  and  shade  of  their  own  supernatural  unfolding. 
The  art  of  God  could  reach  its  mark  of  benefit,  only  by  so 
vast  a  combination  of  matters  so  transcendent  for  dignity  and 
expression.  Whereupon  the  scientific  wordsman,  coming 
after,  undertakes  to  adequately  tell  what  the  grand  biography 
is,  or  amounts  to,  in  three  or  four  lines  of  dry  abstractive 
statement !  Or  we  may  compare  the  gospel  as  a  power  to 
the  impressive  grouping,  action,  suffering  and  sentiment  of  a 
a  picture ;  for,  taken  as  a  medium  of  divine  expression,  it 
comes  under  the  same  general  law ;  what  figure  then  would 
any  critic  expect  to  make  who  should  undertake  to  give  the 
picture  by  a  scientific  formula  ?  Or,  again,  we  may  conceive 
the  gospel  to  be  a  grand  supernatural  tragedy  in  the  world, 
designed  to  work  on  human  hearts  by  all  the  matter  of  loving, 
doing,  suffering,  all  the  scenes  of  craft,  and  stratagem,  and 
hate,  all  the  touching,  and  tender,  and  heart-breaking,  and 
divinely  great  expression  crowded  into  the  four-years  plot  of 
it.  Will  then  some  one  undertake  to  give  us  Othello  by 
dogmatic  article?  or,  if  not,  will  it  be  more  easy  to  give  us 
the  tragedy  of  Jesus  ? 

It  will  be  understood,  of  course,  that  I  do  not  propose  to 
establish  any  article  whatever  in  this  treatise,  but  only  to  ex- 


82  INTRODUCTION. 

hibit,  if  possible,  the  Christ  whom  so  many  centuries  of  dis- 
cipleship  have  so  visibly  been  longing  and  groping  after ;  viz., 
the  loving,  helping,  transforming,  sanctifying  Christ,  the  true 
soul-bread  from  heaven,  the  quickening  Life,  the  POWER  OF 
GOD  UNTO  SALVATION.  If  for  convenience  sake  I  speak  of 
maintaining  "  the  moral  view  "  of  the  cross,  or,  what  is  more 
distinct,  "  the  moral-power  view,"  it  will  not  be  understood 
that  I  am  proposing  an  article,  but  only  that  I  hint,  in  this 
general  way,  a  conception  of  the  gospel  whose  reality  and 
staple  value  are  in  the  facts  that  embody  its  power.  Perhaps 
it  will  sometime  be  judged  that  I  have  labored  the  vast,  un- 
comprehended  complexity,  and  incomprehensible  mystery  of 
the  matter,  as  carefully,  and  conscientiously,  and  perhaps  also 
with  as  true  justice,  as  if  I  had  assumed  the  power  to  scheme 
it  in  a  proposition. 

I  have  called  the  treatise  by  a  name  or  title  that  more 
nearly  describes  it  than  any  other.  It  conceives  the  work  of 
Christ  as  beginning  at  the  point  of  sacrifice,  "  Vicarious  Sacri- 
fice ;"  ending  at  the  same,  and  being  just  this  all  through — so 
a  power  of  salvation  for  the  world.  And  yet  it  endeavors  to 
bring  this  sacrifice  only  so  much  closer  to  our  feeling  and 
perception,  in  the  fact  that  it  makes  the  sacrifice  and  cross  of 
Christ  his  simple  duty,  and  not  any  superlative,  optional  kind 
of  good,  outside  of  all  the  common  principles  of  virtue. 
"  Grounded,"  I  have  said, "  in  principles  of  duty  and  right  that 
are  universal."  It  is  not  goodness  over  good,  and  yielding  a 
surplus  of  merit  in  that  manner  for  us,  but  it  is  only  just  as 
good  as  it  ought  to  be,  or  the  highest  law  of  right  required  it 
to  be ;  a  model,  in  that  view  for  us,  and  a  power,  if  we  can 
suffer  it,  of  ingenerated  life  in  us.  I  probably  do  not  use  the 
term  "  vicarious  sacrifice  "  in  the  commonly  accepted  meaning 
of  the  church  confessions,  and  if  any  one  should  blame  the 


INTRODUCTION.  33 

assumption  of  the  title,  I  may  well  enough  agree  with  him, 
only  holding  him  responsible  for  some  other  and  better  name 
that  more  closely  accords  with  the  Scripture  uses,  or  more 
exactly  represents  the  distinctive  matter  of  the  treatise. 

I  ought  perhaps  to  say  that  the  view  here  presented,  was 
sketched,  and,  for  the  most  part  publicly  taught,  more  than 
ten  years  ago.  It  will  probably  be  remembered,  by  some, 
that  sentiments  which  I  published  about  fourteen  years  ago 
on  this  subject,  raised  a  good  deal  of  agitation,  and  a  con- 
siderable impeachment  of  heresy.  Whether  what  I  now 
publish  agrees,  in  every  particular,  with  what  I  published  then, 
I  have  not  inquired  and  do  not  care  to  know.  I  can  only 
say  that  I  arn  not  aware  of  any  disagreement,  and  have  never 
been  led  to  regret  any  thing  in  the  view  then  presented,  ex- 
cept a  certain  immaturity  and  partiality  of  conception, 
which  it  can  not  be  amiss  to  supplement  by  a  doctrine  that 
more  sufficiently  covers  the  whole  ground  of  the  subject. 


PART    I. 

NOTHING    SUPERLATIVE    IN    VICARIOUS 
SACRIFICE,    OR    ABOVE    THE    UNI- 
VERSAL   PRINCIPLES    OF 
RIGHT    AND    DUTY. 


THE 

UNIVERSITY 


UNIVERSITY 


THE    MEANING  OF  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE. 

IT  is  a  matter  of  sorrowful  indication,  that  the  thing 
most  wanting  to  be  cleared  in  Christianity  is  still,  as  it 
ever  has  been,  the  principal  thing ;  viz.,  the  meaning 
and  method  of  reconciliation  itself,  or  of  what  is  com- 
monly called  the  vicarious  sacrifice.  This  fact  would 
even  be  itself  a  considerable  evidence  against  the  gospel, 
were  it  not  that  the  subject  matter — so  vast  in  the  reach 
of  its  complications,  and  so  nearly  transcendent  in  the 
height  of  its  reasons — yields  up  easily  to  faith  its  practi- 
cal significance,  when  refusing  to  be  theoretically  mas- 
tered, as  yet,  by  the  understanding. 

There  has  been  a  litigation  of  the  sacrifice  going  on 
for  these  eighteen  hundred  years,  and  especially  for  the 
last  eight  hundred ;  yet  still  it  remains  an  open  ques- 
tion with  many,  whether  any  such  thing  as  vicarious 
sacrifice  pertains  to  the  work  of  salvation  Christ  has 
accomplished.  On  one  side  the  fact  is  abjured  as  irra- 
tional and  revolting.  On  the  other  it  is  affirmed  as  a 
principal  fact  of  the  Christian  salvation ;  though  I  feel 
obliged  to  confess  that  it  is  too  commonly  maintained 
under  definitions  and  forms  of  argument  that  make  it 
revolting.  And  which  of  the  two  is  the  greater  wrong 


38  THE    MEANING    OF  PART  I. 

and  most  to  be  deplored,  that  by  which  the  fact  itself  is 
rejected,  or  that  by  which  it  is  made  fit  to  be  rejected, 
I  will  not  stay  to  discuss.  Enough  that  Christianity,  in 
either  way,  suffers  incalculable  loss  ;  or  must,  if  there 
be  any  such  principal  matter  in  it,  as  I  most  certainly 
believe  that  there  is. 

Assuming  now,  for  the  subject  of  this  treatise,  the 
main  question  stated,  our  first  point  must  be  to  settle 

What  is  to  be   a  Jus*  an(^  *rue  conception  of  vicarious 
understood  by  vi-  sacrifice,  or  of  what  is  the  real  undertak- 

carious  sacrifice.  .  Qf 


fice.  For  in  all  such  matters,  the  main  issue  is  com- 
monly decided  by  adjusting  other  and  better  concep- 
tions of  the  question  itself,  and  not  by  forcing  old  ones 
through  into  victory,  by  the  artillery  practice  of  better 
contrived  arguments. 

This  word  vicarious,  that  has  made  so  conspicuous  a 
figure  in  the  debates  of  theology,  it  must  be  admitted  is 
no  word  of  the  Scripture.  The  same  is  true,  however, 
of  free  agency,  character,  theology,  and  of  many  other 
terms  which  the  conveniences  of  use  have  made  com- 
mon. If  a  word  appears  to  be  wanted  in  Christian  dis- 
cussions or  teachings,  the  fact  that  it  is  not  found  in  the 
Scripture  is  no  objection  to  it;  we  have  only  to  be  sure 
that  we  understand  what  we  mean  by  it.  In  the  case, 
too,  of  this  particular  word  vicarious,  a  special  care  is 
needed,  lest  we  enter  something  into  the  meaning,  from 
ourselves,  which  is  not  included  in  the  large  variety  of 
Scripture  terms  and  expressions  the  word  is  set  to  rep- 
resent. 


CHAP.  I.  VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  39 

Thus  we  have — "made  a  curse  for  us" — "bare  our 
sins" — "hath  laid  on  him  the  iniquity  of  us  all" — 
"  made  to  be  sin  for  us  "— "  offered  to  bear  the  sins  of 
many" — "borne  our  griefs  and  carried  oar  sorrows" — 
"  wounded  for  our  transgressions,  bruised  for  our  iniqui- 
ties " — "  tasted  death  for  every  man."  The  whole  Gospel 
is  a  texture,  thus  of  vicarious  conceptions,  in  which  Christ 
is  represented,  in  one  way  or  another,  as  coming  into  our 
place,  substituted  in  our  stead,  bearing  our  burdens, 
answering  for  us,  and  standing  in  a  kind  of  suffering 
sponsorship  for  the  race. 

Now  the  word  vicarious  is  chosen  to  represent,  and 
gather  up  into  itself  all  these  varieties  of  expression. 
It  is  the  same  word,  in  the  root,  as  the  word  vice  in  vice- 
gerent, viceroy,  vicar,  vicar-general,  vice-president,  and 
the  like.  It  is  a  word  that  carries  always  a  face  of  sub- 
stitution, indicating  that  one  person  comes  in  place, 
somehow,  of  another.  Thus  a  vice-president  is  one  who 
is  to  act  in  certain  contingencies,  as  and  for  the  presi- 
dent ;  a  viceroy,  for  the  king.  The  ecclesiastical  vicar  too, 
was  a  vicar  as  being  sent  to  act  for  the  monastic  body, 
whose  duties  were  laid  as  a  charge  upon  him ;  and  the 
pope  is  called  the  vicar  of  Christ,  in  the  same  way,  as 
being  authorized  to  fill  Christ's  place.  Any  person  acts 
vicariously,  in  this  view,  just  so  far  as  he  comes  in  place 
of  another.  The  commercial  agent,  the  trustee,  the  at- 
torney, are  examples  of  vicarious  action  at  common  law. 

Then  if  we  speak  of  "sacrifice,"  any  person  acts  in  a 
way  of  "vicarious  sacrifice,"  not  when  he  burns  upon 
an  altar  in  some  other's  place,  but  when  he  makes  loss 


40  THE    MEANING    OF  PART  I. 

for  him,  even  as  lie  would  make  loss  for  himself,  in  the 
offering  of  a  sacrifice  for  his  sin.  The  expression  is  a 
figure,  representing  that  the  party  making  such  sacrifice 
for  another,  comes  into  burden,  pain,  weariness,  or  even 
to  the  yielding  up  of  life  for  his  sake.  The  word 
"vicarious"  does  not  say  all,  nor  the  word  "sacrifice," 
but  the  two  together  make  out  the  true  figure  of  Christ 
and  his  Gospel. 

In  this  sense  it  is  that  Christianity  or  the  Christian 
salvation  is  a  vicarious  sacrifice.  It  does  not  mean 
What  vicarious  simpty  tnat  Christ  puts  himself  into  the 
sacrifice  does  not  case  of  man  as  a  helper ;  one  man  helps 
another  without  any  vicarious  relation- 
ship implied  or  supposed.  Neither  does  it  mean  that 
Christ  undertakes  for  man  in  a  way  of  influence ;  one 
man  tries  to  influence  another,  without  coming  at  all 
into  his  place.  Neither  does  the  vicarious  sacrifice  im- 
ply that  he  simply  comes  under  common  liabilities  with 
us,  as  when  every  citizen  suffers  for  the  wrongs  and 
general  misconduct  and  consequent  misgovernment  of 
the  community  to  which  he  belongs.  Nor  that  he  simply 
comes  into  the  track  of  those  penal  retributions  which 
outrun  the  wrongs  they  chastise,  passing  over  upon  the 
innocent,  as  the  sins  of  fathers  propagate  their  evils  in 
the  generations  of  their  children  coming  after.  The 
idea  "of  Christ's  vicarious  sacrifice  is  not  matched  by 
any  of  these  lighter  examples,  though  it  has  something 
in  common  with  them  all,  and  is  therefore  just  so  much 
likelier  to  be  confounded  with  them  by  a  lighter  and 
really  sophistical  interpretation. 


CHAP.  I.  VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  41 

On  the  other  hand,  we  are  not  to  hold  the  Scripture 
terms  of  vicarious  sacrifice,  as  importing  a  literal  sub- 
stitution of  places,  by  which  Christ  becomes  a  sinner 
for  sinners,  or  penalty  subject  to  our  deserved  penalties. 
That  is  a  kind  of  substitution  that  offends  every  strong- 
est sentiment  of  our  nature.  He  can  not  become  guilty 
for  us.  Neither,  as  God  is  a  just  being,  can  he  be  any 
how  punishable  in  our  place— all  God's  moral  senti- 
ments would  be  revolted  by  that.  'And  if  Christ  should 
himself  consent  to  such  punishment,  he  would  only  ask 
to  have  all  the  most  immovable  convictions,  both  of 
God's  moral  nature  and  our  own,  confounded,  or  eter- 
nally put  by. 

Excluding  now  all  these  under-stated  and  over-stated 
explanations  we  come  to  the  true  conception,  which  is 
that  Christ,  in  what  is  called  his  vicari-  The  positive  con- 
ous  sacrifice,  simply  engages,  at  the  ex-  ceptkm. 
pense  of  great  suffering  and  even  of  death  itself,  to  bring 
us  out  of  our  sins  themselves  and  so  out  of  their  penal- 
ties; being  himself  profoundly  identified  with  us  in 
our  fallen  state,  and  burdened  in  feeling  with  our  evils. 
Nor  is  there  any  thing  so  remote,  or  difficult,  or  violent, 
in  this  vicarious  relation,  assumed  by  Christ  as  many 
appear  to  suppose.  It  would  rather  be  a  wonder  if, 
being  what  he  is,  he  did  not  assume  it.  For  we  are  to 
see  and  make  our  due  account  of  this  one  fact,  that  a 
good  being  is,  by  the  supposition,  ready,  just  according 
to  his  goodness,  to  act  vicariously  in  behalf  of  any  bad, 
or  miserable  being,  whose  condition  he  is  able  to  restore. 
For  a  good  being  is  not  simply  one  who  gives  bounties 

4*  * 


42  THE    MEANING    OF  PART  I. 

and  favors,  but  one  who  is  in  the  principle  of  love ;  and 
it  is  the  nature  of  love,  universally,  to  insert  itself  into 
the  miseries,  and  take  upon  its  feeling  the  burdens  of 
others.  Love  does  not  consider  the  ill  desert  of  the 
subject;  he  may  even  be  a  cruel  and  relentless  enemy. 
It  does  not  consider  the  expense  of  toil,  and  sacrifice, 
and  suffering  the  intervention  may  cost.  It  stops  at 
nothing  but  the  known  impossibility  of  relief,  or  bene- 
fit ;  asks  for  nothing  as  inducement,  but  the  opportunity 
Love  a  vicarious  of  success.  Love  is  a  principle  essentially 

principle.  vicarious  in  its  own  nature,  identifying 
the  subject  with  others,  so  as  to  suffer  their  adversities 
and  pains,  and  taking  on  itself  the  burden  of  their 
evils.  It  does  not  come  in  officiously  and  abruptly,  and 
propose  to  be  substituted  in  some  formal  and  literal 
way  that  overturns  all  the  moral  relations  of  law  and 
desert,  but  it  clings  to  the  evil  and  lost  man  as  in  feel- 
ing, afflicted  for  him,  burdened  by  his  ill  deserts,  inca- 
pacities and  pains,  encountering  gladly  any  loss  or  suf- 
fering for  his  sake.  Approving  nothing  wrong  in  him, 
but  faithfully  reproving  and  condemning  him  in  all  sin, 
it  is  yet  made  sin — plunged,  so  to  speak,  into  all  the 
fortunes  of  sin,  by  its  friendly  sympathy.  In  this  man- 
ner it  is  entered  vicariously  into  sacrifice  on  his  account. 
So  naturally  and  easily  does  the  vicarious  sacrifice  com- 
mend itself  to  our  intelligence,  by  the  stock  ideas  and 
feelings  out  of  which  it  grows. 

How  it  was  with  Christ,  and  how  he  bore  our  sins,  we 
can  see  exactly,  from  a  very  impressive  and  remarkable 
passage  in  Matthew's  Gospel,  where  he  conceives  that 


VICABIOUS  SACR™  -UHlffeBSITl 

Christ  is  entered  vicariously  into  men's  <3rea$S«  iust^ 
as  he  is  elsewhere  shown  to  bear,  and  to  be  v^^^l^OB.^ 
entered  into,  the  burden  of  their  sins.     I 

Usus    loqucndi 

produce  the  passage,  at  this  early  point  in  in  the  sacrificial 
the  discussion,  because  of  the  very  great  terms< 
and  decisive  importance  it  has ;  for  it  is  remarkable 
as  being  the  one  Scripture  citation,  that  gives,  beyond  a 
question,  the  exact  usus  loquendi  of  all  the  vicarious  and 
sacrificial  language  of  the  New  Testament. 

Christ  has  been  pouring  out  his  sympathies,  all  day, 
in  acts  of  healing,  run  down,  as  it  were,  by  the  wretched 
multitudes  crowding  about  him  and  imploring  his  pity. 
No  humblest,  most  repulsive  creature  is  neglected  or 
fails  to  receive  his  tenderest,  most  brotherly  considera- 
tion. His  heart  accepts  each  one  as  a  burden  upon  its 
feeling,  and  by  that  feeling  he  is  inserted  into  the  lot, 
the  pain,  the  sickness,  the  sorrow  of  each.  And  so  the 
evangelist,  having,  as  we  see,  no  reference  whatever  to 
the  substitution  for  sin,  says — "  That  it  might  be  ful- 
filled, which  was  spoken  by  Esaias  the  prophet,  saying 
— *  Himself  took  our  infirmities  and  bare  our  sick- 
nesses.' "*  And  the  text  is  the  more  remarkable  that 
the  passage  he  cites  from  Isaiah,  is  from  his  liii  chapter, 
which  is,  in  fact,  a  kind  of  stock  chapter,  whence  all 
the  most  vicarious  language  of  the  New  Testament  is 
drawn.  Besides  the  word  bare  occurs  in  the  citation  ;  a 
word  that  is  based  on  the  very  same  figure  of  carrying 
as  that  which  is  used  in  the  expression,  "  bare  our  sins," 
"  bare  the  sins  of  many,"  and  is  moreover  precisely  the 
*  Matth.  viii,  17. 


44  THE    MEANING    OF  PART  I. 

same  word  which  is  used  by  the  Apostle  when  he  says 
[Ba$<ra%£ri]  "  bear  ye  one  another's  burdens,  and  so  fulfill 
the  law  of  Christ."  If  then  we  desire  to  know  exactly 
what  the  substitution  of  Christ  for  sin  was,  and  how  far  it 
went — what  it  means  for  example  that  he  bare  our  sin — 
we  have  only  to  revert  back  to  what  is  here  said  of 
his  relation  to  sicknesses,  and  our  question  is  resolved. 

What  then  does  it  mean  that  Christ  "bare  our  sick- 
nesses ?"  Does  it  mean  that  he  literally  had  our  sick- 
nesses transferred  to  him,  and  so  taken  off  from  us? 
Does  it  mean  that  he  became  blind  for  the  blind,  lame 
for  the  lame,  a  leper  for  the  lepers,  suffering  in  himself 
all  the  fevers  and  pains  he  took  away  from  others? 
No  one  had  ever  such  a  thought.  How  then  did  he 
bear  our  sicknesses,  or  in  what  sense?  In  the  sense 
that  he  took  them  on  his  feeling,  had  his  heart  bur- 
dened by  the  sense  of  them,  bore  the  disgusts  of  their 
loathsome  decays,  felt  their  pains  over  again,  in  the 
tenderness  of  his  more  than  human  sensibility.  Thus 
manifestly  it  was  that  he  bare  our  sicknesses — his  very 
love  to  us  put  him,  so  far,  in  a  vicarious  relation  to  them, 
and  made  him,  so  far,  a  partaker  in  them.* 

*  This  most  natural  and  certainly  great  and  worthy  meaning  for  the 
passage  from  Matthew  is  so  far  off  from  the  dogmatic  and  prosy  literal- 
ism of  many,  that  they  are  able  to  see  scarcely  any  thing  in  it.  Bishop 
Pearce,  just  because  the  passage  does  not  meet  his  notion  of  Isaiah's  fa- 
mous Christological  chapter,  and  does  not  signify  any  tiling  true  enough 
in  itself,  imagines  that  it  must  be  an  interpolation !  Dr.  Magee  (Yol.  I., 
pp.  313-355)  expends  more  than  forty  pages  of  learning  on  it,  contriving 
how  he  may  get  the  Prophet  and  Evangelist  together,  in  some  meaning 
that  will  make  room  for  a  more  literal  and  penal  bearing  of  sins  than 


CHAP.  I.  VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  45 

Here  then  we  have  the  true  law  of  interpretation, 
when  the  vicarious  relation  of  Christ  to  our  sins  comes 
into  view.  It  does  not  mean  that  he  takes  them  literally 
upon  him,  as  some  of  the  old  theologians  and  a  very 
few  moderns  appear  to  believe ;  it  does  not  mean  that 

there  can  be  of  sicknesses.  By  a  heavy  practice  on  the  Hebrew  verb 
in  the  first  clause,  and  the  Hebrew  noun  in  the  second,  he  gets  the 
"took  "  converted  into  "  took  away"  and  the  sicknesses  into  "sorrows;" 
reading  thus — "  Himself  took  away  our  infirmities  and  bare  our  sorrows." 
But  it  happens  most  unfortunately  that  the  Greek  word  of  the  evange- 
list [tXa/?£]  will  not  bear  any  such  meaning  as  "took  away,"  but 
insists  on  signifying  only  that  kind  of  taking  which  appropriates,  or  re- 
ceives, or  even  seizes  by  robbery ;  and  the  Greek  word  [voo-oj]  never 
means  any  thing  but  "sickness;"  save  when  it  is  used  as  an  epithet 
in  speaking  figuratively  of  the  "  diseases  of  the  mind."  The  fact  is  that 
the  evangelist  translates  the  prophet  well,  and  the  English  version  trans- 
lates the  evangelist  well,  and  the  vicariousness  resulting  is  a  grand,  liv- 
ing idea,  such  as  meets  the  highest  intelligence,  and  yields  an  impression 
that  accords  with  the  best  revelations  of  consciousness,  in  the  state  of 
love.  Every  true  Christian  knows  what  it  is  to  bear  the  sins  of  wrong- 
doers and  enemies  in  this  manner,  and  loves  to  imagine  that,  in  doing  it, 
he  learns  from  the  cross  of  his  Master — being  almost  raised  into  the 
plane  of  divinity  himself,  by  a  participation  so  exalted.  There  was 
never  a  case  of  construction  more  simple  and  plain  than  this,  and  it  has 
the  merit,  if  we  receive  it,  of  carrying  us  completely  clear,  at  once,  of  all 
the  fearful  stumbling  blocks  which  a  crude,  over-literal  interpretation  has 
been  piling  about  the  cross  for  so  many  centuries.  There  is  no  stranger 
freak  of  dullness  in  all  the  literary  history  of  the  world,  and  nothing 
that  is  going  to  make  a  more  curious  chapter  for  the  ages  to  come,  than 
the  constructions  raised  on  these  vicarious  forms  of  Scripture,  and  the 
immense  torment  of  learning  and  theologic  debate  that  has  occupied  a 
whole  millenium  in  consequence.  The  long  period,  preceding,  when 
Christ  was  regarded  as  a  ransom  paid  to  the  devil,  will  be  more  easily 
qualified  by  allowances  that  save  it  in  respoct. 


46  THE    MEANING    OF  PART  I. 

he  took  their  ill  desert  upon  him  by  some  mysterious 
act  of  imputation,  or  had  their  punishment  transferred 
How  Christ  to  ^s  Person-  A  sickness  might  pos- 
takea  our  sins  sibly  be  transferred,  but  a  sin  can  not 
upon  him.  by  any  rationai  possibility.  It  does 

not  mean  that  he  literally  came  into  the  hell  of  our 
retributive  evils  under  sin,  and  satisfied,  by  his  own 
suffering,  the  violated  justice  of  God ;  for  that  kind 
of  penal  suffering  would  satisfy  nothing  but  the  very 
worst  injustice.  No,  but  the  bearing  of  our  sins  does 
mean,  that  Christ  bore  them  on  his  feeling,  became  in- 
serted into  their  bad  lot  by  his  sympathy  as  a  friend, 
yielded  up  himself  and  his  life,  even,  to  an  effort  of  re- 
storing mercy;  in  a  word  that  he  bore  our  sins  in  just 
the  same  sense  that  he  bore  our  sicknesses.  Understand 
that  love  itself  is  an  essentially  vicarious  principle,  and 
the  solution  is  no  longer  difficult. 

See  how  it  is  with  love  in  the  case  of  a  mother.     She 
loves  her  child,  and  it  comes  out  in  that  fact,  or  from  it, 

Motherhood  ^Da*  s^e  wa*cnes  ^or  tne  child,  bears  all 
friendship.  Patri-  its  pains  and  sicknesses  on  her  own  feel- 

otism  vicarious.        •  n      i         •,   •  -\    •  i 

ing,  and  when  it  is  wronged,  is  stung  her- 
self, by  the  wrong  put  upon  it,  more  bitterly  far  than 
the  child.  She  takes  every  chance  of  sacrifice  for  it, 
as  her  own  opportunity.  She  creates,  in  fact,  imaginary 
ills  for  it,  because  she  has  not  opportunities  enough  of 
sacrifice.  In  the  same  manner  a  friend  that  is  real  and 
true  takes  all  the  sufferings,  losses,  wrongs,  indignities, 
of  a  friend  on  his  own  feeling,  and  will  sometimes  suffer 
even  more  for  him  than  he  does  for  himself.  So  also 


CHAP.  I.  VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  47 

with  the  patriot  or  citizen  who  truly  loves  his  country, 
even  though  that  love  is  mixed  with  many  false  fires 
that  are  only  fires  of  ambition  or  revenge — how  does  it 
wrench  his  feeling,  what  a  burden  does  it  lay  upon  his 
concern,  by  day  and  by  night,  when  that  country,  so 
dear  to  him,  is  being  torn  by  faction,  and  the  fate  of  its 
laws  and  liberties  is  thrown  upon  the  chances  of  an 
armed  rebellion.  Then  you  will  see  how  many  thou- 
sands of  citizens,  who  never  knew  before  what  sacrifices 
it  was  in  the  power  of  their  love  to  make  for  their  coun- 
try's welfare,  rushing  to  the  field  and  throwing  their 
bodies  and  dear  lives  on  the  battle's  edge  to  save  it ! 

Thus  it?  is  that  every  sort  of  love  is  found  twining  its 
feeling  always  into  the  feeling,  and  loss,  and  want,  and 
woe,  of  whatever  people,  or  person,  or  even  enemy,  it 
loves ;  thus  that  God  himself  takes  our  sinning  enmity 
upon  his  heart,  painfully  burdened  by  our  broken 
state,  and  travailing,  in  all  the  deepest  feeling  of  his  na- 
ture, to  recover  us  to  himself.  And  this  it  is  which  the 
cross  and  vicarious  sacrifice  of  Jesus  signify  to  us,  or 
outwardly  express.  Such  a  God  in  love,  must  be  such 
a  Saviour  in  suffering — he  could  not  well  be  other  or 
less.  There  is  a  Gethsemane  hid  in  all  love,  and  when 
the  fit  occasion  comes,  no  matter  how  great  and  high 
the  subject  may  be,  its  heavy  groaning  will  be  heard — 
even  as  it  was  in  Christ.  He  was  in  an  agony,  exceed- 
ing sorrowful  even  unto  death.  By  that  sign  it  was 
that  God's  love  broke  into  the  world,  and  Christianity 
was  born ! 

Here,  then,  as  I  conceive,  is  the  true  seed  principle  of 


48  THE    MEANING    OF  PART  J. 

the  Christian  salvation.     What  we  call  the  vicarious 

sacrifice   of  Christ  is  nothing  strange  as  regards  the 

eria    principle  of  it,  no  superlative,  unexam- 

tivc  in  the  princi-   pled,  and  therefore  unintelligible  grace. 

pie  of  the  cross.         It  only  ^QQS  ^  gufferSj  an(j  comes  into 

substitution  for,  just  what  any  and  all  love  will,  accord- 
ing to  its  degree.  And,  in  this  view,  it  is  not  something 
higher  in  principle  than  our  human  virtue  knows,  and 
which  we  ourselves  are  never  to  copy  or  receive,  but  it 
is  to  be  understood  by  what  we  know  already,  and  is  to 
be  more  fully  understood  by  what  we  are  to  know  here- 
after, when  we  are  complete  in  Christ.  Nothing  is 
wanting  to  resolve  the  vicarious  sacrifice  of  Jesus,  but 
the  commonly  known,  always  familiar  principle  of  love, 
accepted  as  the  fundamental  law  of  duty,  even  by  man- 
kind. Given  the  universality  of  love,  the  universality 
of  vicarious  sacrifice  is  given  also.  Here  is  the  center 
and  deepest  spot  of  good,  or  goodness,  conceivable.  At 
this  point  we  look  into  heaven's  eye  itself,  and  read 
the  meaning  of  all  heavenly  grace. 

How  much  to  be  regretted  then  is  it,  that  Christianity 
has  been  made  so  great  an  offense,  to  so  many  ingenuous 
and  genuinely  thoughtful  souls,  at  just  this  point  of  vi- 

The  great  offense  carious  sacrifice,  where  it  is  noblest  to 
ofthecrossacontri-  thought,  and  grandest,  and  most  impres- 

bution  of  theology. 


a  question  over  its  reality  and  truth  to  nature,  more  than 
over  a  mother's  watch  and  waiting  for  her  child.  And 
yet  there  has  been  kept  up,  for  centuries,  what  a  strain  of 
logical,  or  theological  endeavor  —  shall  I  call  it  high,  or 


CHAP.  1.  VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  49 

shall  I  call  it  weak  and  low — to  make  out  some  formal, 
legal,  literal  account  of  substitution  and  vicarious  sac- 
rifice, in  which  all  God's  quickening  motivity  and  power 
are  taken  away  from  the  feeling,  and  nothing  left  but 
a  sapless  wood,  or  dry  stubble  of  reason,  for  a  mortal 
sinner's  faith  to  cling  to.  Nothing  is  so  simple,  and 
beautiful,  and  true,  and  close  to  feeling,  as  this  same 
blessed  truth — Jesus  the  Lord  in  vicarious  sacrifice ;  and 
yet  there  is  made  of  it,  I  know  not  what,  or  how  many 
riddles,  which  to  solve,  were  it  possible,  were  only  to 
miss  of  its  power ;  much  more  which  to  miss  of  solving, 
is  only  to  be  lost  in  mazes  and  desert  windings  where 
even  faith  itself  is  only  turned  to  jangling.  How  often 
has  the  innate  sense  of  justice  in  men  been  mocked  by  the 
speculated  satisfactions  of  justice,  or  schemes  of  satisfac- 
tion, made  up  for  God  ;  how  often  has  the  human  feel- 
ing that  would  have  been  attracted  and  melted,  by  the 
gracious  love  of  Jesus,  coming  to  assume  our  nature  and 
bear  our  sin,  been  chilled,  or  revolted,  by  some  account 
of  his  death,  that  turns  it  to  a  theologic  fiction,  by  con- 
triving how  he  literally  had  our  sin  upon  him,  and 
was  therefore  held  to  die  retributively  on  account  of  it. 
At  the  same  time,  there  have  been  thrown  off  into 
antagonism,  a  great  many  times,  whole  sects  of  disci- 
ples, who  could  see  no  way  to  escape  No  vitality  in  a 
the  revolting  theories  of  vicarious  sacri-  Gospel  without  vi- 

.,       ,  ,-,      c     .  j    carious  sacrifice. 

fice,  but  to  formally  deny  the  fact ;  and 
then  what  evidence  have  they  given  of  the  fact,  as  a 
distinctive  integral  element  of  Christianity,  by  their 
utter  inability,  in  the  way  of  denial,  to  maintain  the  vi- 

5 


50  THE    MEANING    OF  PART  I. 

tality  and  propagating  power  of  Christian  society  with- 
out it.  If  God's  love  has  no  vicarious  element,  theirs 
of  course  will  have  as  little ;  if  he  simply  stands  by  law 
and  retribution,  if  he  never  enters  himself  into  human 
evils  and  sins,  so  as  to  be  burdened  by  them,  never 
identifies  himself  with  souls  under  evil,  to  bear  them — 
enemies  and  outcasts  though  they  be — then  it  will  be 
seen  that  they,  as  believers,  are  never  in  affliction  for  the 
sin  of  others,  never  burdened  as  intercessors  for  them ; 
for  there  was  in  fact  no  such  mind  in  Christ  Jesus  him- 
self. On  the  contrary,  as  God  stands  off,  waiting  only 
by  the  laws  of  duty  and  abstract  justice,  moved  vica- 
riously to  no  intervention,  so  will  they  lose  out  the  soul- 
bond  of  unity  and  religious  fellowship  with  their  kind, 
dropping  assunder  into  atoms  of  righteous  individuality, 
and  counting  it  even  a  kind  of  undignified  officiousness 
to  be  overmuch  concerned  for  others.  Christian  society 
is  by  that  time  gone.  The  sense  of  God,  translating 
himself  into  the  evils  and  fallen  fortunes  of  souls,  in  the 
vicarious  love  and  passion  of  his  Son,  was  the  root  of  it ; 
and  that  being  gone,  the  divine  life  takes  no  headship  in 
them,  they  no  membership  of  unity  with  each  other. 
They  are  only  incommunicable  monads — the  Christian 
koinonia  is  lost  or  abolished.  u  I  will  take  care  of  myself, 
.answer  for  myself,  and  let  every  other  do  the  same  " — 
that  is  the  Christianity  left — it  is  duty,  self-care,  right 
living  atomically  held  before  moral  standards.  As  to 
the  church,  or  the  church  life,  it  no  longer  exists; 
Christ  is  the  head  of  nothing,  because  he  has  never 
come  into  the  cause,  or  feeling,  or  life  of  any,  by  coming 


CHAP.!  VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  51 

into  their  lot.  So  necessary  is  the  faith  of  a  vicarious 
sacrifice  to  the  maintenance  of  any  genuine  Christian 
life  and  society.  Without  and  apart  from  it  individual- 
ties  are  never  bridged,  never  made  coalescent,  or  com- 
mon to  each  other.  The  chill  that  follows  must  in  due 
time  be  fatal.  No  such  mode  of  necessary  unfellowship 
can  live. 

By  this  experimental  proof,  it  can  be  clearly  seen 
how  necessary  to  the  living  Gospel  and  church  of 
Christ  is  the  faith,  in  some  true  sense,  of  a  vicarious 
sacrifice.  And  what  that  sense  may  be  it  is  not  diffi- 
cult, I  think,  to  find.  We  have  already  found  that  love 
itself  contains  the  fact  and  is  the  sufficient  and  easy 
solution. 

But  there  is  an  objection  to  be  encountered  even  here, 
before  the  solution  will  be  satisfactory  to  some ;  it  is 
that  if  love,  love  in  God,  and  love  in  all  ~, . 

Objection  that 

beings  created  and  uncreated,  is  an  essen-  God  must  be  un- 
tially  vicarious  element  or  principle;  if  it  haPP^in 
moves  to  the  certain  identification  of  the  loving  party 
with  evil  minds  and  their  pains,  and  the  assuming  of 
them,  to  be  a  burden  on  its  feeling,  or  even  a  possible 
agony  in  it ;  then,  as  long  as  there  is  any  such  thing  as 
evil  and  death,  love  must  be  a  cause  of  unhappiness,  a 
lot  of  suffering  and  sorrow.  In  one  view  it  must,  in 
another  it  will  be  joy  itself,  the  fullest,  and  profoundest, 
and  sublimest  joy  conceivable.  There  was  never  a 
being  on  earth  so  deep  in  his  peace  and  so  essentially 
blessed  as  Jesus  Christ  Even  his  agony  itself  is  scarcely 
an  exception.  There  is  no  joy  so  grand  as  that  which 


52  THE    MEANING    OF  PART  I. 

has  a  form  of  tragedy,  and  there  is  besides,  in  a  soul 
given  up  to  loss  and  pain  for  love's  sake,  such  a  con- 
sciousness of  good — it  is  so  far  ennobled  by  its  own 
great  feeling — that  it  rises  in  the  sense  of  magnitude, 
and  majesty,  and  Godlikeness,  and  has  thoughts  breaking 
out  in  it  as  the  sound  of  many  waters,  joys  that  are  full 
as  the  sea.  And  this,  too,  corresponds  exactly  with  our 
human  experience.  We  are  never  so  happy,  so  essen- 
tially blessed  as  when  we  suffer  well,  wearing  out  our  life 
in  sympathies  spent  on  the  evil  and  undeserving,  bur- 
dened heavily  in  our  prayers,  struggling  on  through  se- 
cret Gethsemanes  and  groaning  before  God  in  groanings 
audible  to  God  alone,  for  those  who  have  no  mercy  on 
themselves.  What  man  of  the  race  ever  finds  that  in 
such  love  as  this  he  has  been  made  unhappy  ?  As  Christ 
himself  bequeathed  his  joy  to  such,  so  has  he  found  it 
to  be  a  most  real  and  dear  bequest,  and  that  when  he 
has  been  able,  after  Christ's  example,  to  bear  most  and 
be  deepest  in  sacrifice  for  others — even  painful  sacrifice 
— then  has  he  been  raised  to  the  highest  pitch  of  beat- 
itude. The  compensations  of  such  a  life  transcend,  how 
sublimely,  the  losses.  As  they  did  with  Christ,  so  they 
do  with  us,  so  they  will  in  all  beings  and  worlds.  There- 
fore when  we  say  that  love  is  a  principle  of  vicarious 
sacrifice,  how  far  off  are  we  from  casting  any  shade  of 
gloom  on  the  possibilities  and  fortunes  of  this  love. 
We  only  magnify  its  joy  and  brighten  its  prospect. 

Thus  we  take  our  beginning  for  this  great  subject, 
the  grace  of  the  cross,  and  the  Christian  salvation.  As 
yet  we  have  scarcely  passed  the  gate,  but  the  gate  is 


CHAP.  I.  VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  53 

open.  This  one  thing  is  clear,  that  love  is  a  vicarious 
principle,  bound  by  its  own  nature  itself  to  take  upon 
its  feeling,  and  care,  and  sympathy,  those  who  are  down 
under  evil  and  its  penalties.  Thus  it  is  that  Jesus  takes 
our  nature  upon  him,  to  be  made  a  curse  for  us  and  to 
bear  our  sin.  Holding  such  a  view  of  vicarious  sacri- 
fice, we  must  find  it  belonging  to  the  essential  nature  of 
all  holy  virtue.  We  are  also  required. 

»  All  good  beings 

Of  COUrse,  tO  gO  forward  and  show  how    in  the  principle  of 

it  pertains  to  all  other  good  beings,  as  vicarious  sacrifice- 
truly  as  to  Christ  himself  in  the  flesh — how  the  eternal 
Father  before  Christ,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  coming  after, 
and  the  good  angels  both  before  and  after,  all  alike  have 
borne  the  burdens,  struggled  in  the  pains  of  their  vi- 
carious feeling  for  men ;  and  then,  at  last,  how  Chris- 
tianity comes  to  its  issue,  in  begetting  in  us  the  same 
vicarious  love  that  reigns  in  all  the  glorified  and  good 
minds  of  the  heavenly  kingdom ;  gathering  us  in  after 
Christ  our  Master,  as  they  that  have  learned  to  bear  his 
cross,  and  be  with  him  in  his  passion.  Then  having 
seen  how  Christ,  as  a  power  on  character  and  life,  renews 
us  in  this  love,  we  shall  be  able  to  consider  the  very 
greatly  inferior  question,  how  far  and  in  what  manner 
he  becomes  our  substitute,  before  the  law  violated  by 
our  transgression. 

I  should  scarcely  be  justified  in  concluding  this  chap- 
ter, if  I  did  not  first  suggest,  for  the  benefit  of  some, 
who  may  recoil  from  this  profoundly  earnest  truth  of 
sacrifice,  as  one  that  rather  shocks,  than  approves  itself 

5* 


54:  THE    MEANING    OF  PART  I. 

to,  their  feeling,  that  it  is  a  kind  of  truth  not  likely  to 
be  realized,  without  experience.  It  will  seem  to  be  a 

Experience  want-    trUt^  overdrawn>  Unless  it  is  drawn   OUt 

ed  tJ>  know  this  of  the  soul's  own  consciousness,  at  least 
truth  of  sacrifice.  ^  8OmQ  e]ementary  degree.  Some  the- 
ologians, I  fear,  will  not  be  taken  by  it,  because  it  has 
never  sufficiently  taken  hold  of  them.  Mere  under- 
standing is  an  element  too  sterile  and  dry  to  know 
this  kind  of  truth — it  seems  to  be  no  truth  at  all,  but  a 
pietistic  straining  rather  after  something  better  than 
anybody  can  solidly  know. 

Let  me  stop  then  here,  upon  the  margin  of  the  sub- 
ject, and  without  any  thought  of  preaching  to  my 
reader  who  parts  company  with  me  thus  early,  put  him 
on  a  practical  experiment  that  will  let  him  a  great  way 
farther  into  this  first  chapter  of  divine  knowledge,  than, 
as  yet,  he  thinks  it  possible  to  go.  The  problem  I  would 
give  you  is  this ;  viz.,  that  you  find  how  to  practically 
bear  an  enemy,  or  a  person  whom  you  dislike,  so  as  to 
be  exactly  satisfied  and  happy  in  your  relationship.  If 
you  can  stand  off  in  disgust,  or  set  yourself  squarely 
against  him  in  hatred,  or  revenge,  then  do  it  and  bless 
yourself  in  it.  If  that  is  impossible,  try  indifference, 
turn  your  back  and  say,  "  let  him  go  and  fare  as  his 
deserts  will  help  him."  If  there  is  no  sweetness  in  this, 
as  there  certainly  is  none,  then  begin  to  pray  for  him, 
that  he  may  have  a  better  mind  and  that  you  may  be 
duly  patient  with  him.  This  will  be  softer,  and  you 
may  begin  to  feel  that  you  are  a  good  deal  Christian  or 
Christian-like,  towards  him.  And  yet  there  will  be  a 


CHAP.I.  VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  55 

certain  dryness  in  your  feeling,  as  if  you  had  only  come 
into  the  formality  of  good.     Then  go  just  one  step  far- 
ther— take  the  man  upon  your  love,  bear  him  and  his 
wrong  as  a  mind's  burden,  undertake  for  him,  study  by 
what  means  and  by  what  help  obtained  from  God,  you 
can  get  him  out  of  his  evils,  and  make  a  friend  of  him 
— God's  friend  and  yours — do  this  and  see  if  it  does 
not  open  to  you  a  very  great  and  wonderful  discovery 
— the  sublime  reality  and  solidly  grand  significance  of 
vicarious  sacrifice.     Christ  will  be  no  more  any  stone 
of  stumbling  in  it,  the  truth  itself  no  more  an  offense, 
or  extravagance;   for  you  now  have  in  your  heart, 
what  is  no  stone  at  all,  but  a  living  and  self-evidencing 
grace  by  which  to  solve  it.     The  offense  of  the  cross — 
how  surely  is  it  ended,  when  once  you  have  learned  the 
way  in  which  God  bears  an  enemy !     The  quarrels  of 
the  head  will  be  smoothed  away  how  soon,  by  the  sim- 
ple methods  of  a  wise  and  loving  heart.     The  recoil  you 
were  in  is  over.     In  the  problem  how  to  bear  an  enemy 
you  have  found  your  Gethsemane  and  sounded  for  your- 
self the  tragic  depths  of  good— depths  of  joyful  as  of 
sorrow-burdened  feeling — and  so  you  understand  how 
easily,  believe  in  what  glorious  evidence,  the  vicarious 
sacrifice  of  Jesus  for  the  sins  of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE   ETERNAL  FATHER  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE. 

IT  has  b^en  a  fatal  source  of  difficulty  and  mental 
confusion,  as  regards  the  vicarious  sacrifice  and  saving 
work  of  Christ,  that  it  has  been  taken  to  be  a  superla- 
tive kind  of  goodness;  a  matter  of  sacrifice  outside 
of  all  the  common  terms  and  principles  of  duty  or 
holy  obligation ;  an  act,  or  enterprise  of  self-sacrifice, 
not  provided  for  in  the  universal  statutes  and  stand- 
ards of  moral  perfection.  The  assumption  has  been 
that  Christ  went  out  of  obligation,  out  of  law  and 
beyond,  to  do  the  sacrifice,  and  was  just  so  much  bet- 
ter than  perfect  in  good,  because  he  would  have  been 
perfect  in  good,  if  he  had  declined  the  undertaking. 
Thus  it  has  been  a  formally  asserted  point  of  theology, 
that  his  undertaking  was  "  optional ;"  that  which  he 
might,  or  might  not  assume,  and  which,  if  he  had 
chosen  to  decline,  would  have  raised  no  sense  of  defect 
before  his  own  standards  of  excellence.  This  too  has 
been  taken  for  a  point  fundamental,  as  regards  the  satis- 
faction for  sins  accomplished  in  his  death,  that  he  raised 
a  superlative  merit  in  it  to  be  set  to  our  account,  only  by 
doing  optionally  what  he  was  under  no  obligation,  on 
his  own  account,  to  do.  What  he  ought  to  do  for  him- 


CHAP.  II.        THE    ETERNAL    FATHER,    ETC.  57 

self,  or  in  his  own  obligation,  could  not  avail  for  us, 
but  only  for  himself.  What  he  did,  or  suffered  beyond 
this,  was  a  merit  in  excess,  that  could  be  and  was  ac- 
cepted for  our  justification,  or  the  substitution  of  our 
just  punishment. 

Every  such  attempt  to  scheme  the  work  of  Christ, 
and  put  him  in  the  terms  of  the  understanding,  begins, 
we  ought  easily  to  see,  by  removing  The  fiction  of  a 
him  beyond  all  terms  of  understanding,  superlative  merit. 
Hence  the  painful  confusion  of  ideas,  the  artificial  mock 
speculations,  the  conclusions  that  are  shocking  to  all 
natural  sentiments  of  right  and  justice — the  imputa- 
tions that  are  figments,  of  merits  that  are  inconceivable, 
accomplishing  satisfactions  with  God  that  are  as  far  as 
possible  from  satisfying  men — all  which  have  infested, 
for  so  many  centuries,  the  history  of  this  great  subject. 
Plainly  enough  we  can  mean  nothing,  by  a  merit  that 
is  outside  of  all  our  standards  of  merit.  If  Christ  was 
consenting,  optionally,  to  what  he  might  as  well  have 
declined  ;  if  he  was  just  so  much  better  than  he  ought 
to  be  on  his  own  account ;  then  the  surplus  over  is  any 
thing,  or  nothing ;  we  may  call  it  merit,  but  we  do  not 
know  what  it  is ;  we  may  balance  it  against  the  sins  of  the 
world,  but  we  can  not  be  sure  of  a  grain's  weight  in  it. 
What  can  we  think,  or  know,  of  a  goodness  over  and 
above  all  standards  of  good?  We  might  as  well  talk 
of  extensions  beyond  space,  or  truths  beyond  the  true. 
Goodness,  holy  virtue,  is  the  same  in  all  worlds  and 
beings,  measured  by  the  same  universal  and  eternal 
standards ;  else  it  is  nothing  to  us.  Defect  is  sin ;  over- 


58  THE    ETERNAL    FATHER  PART  I. 

plus  is  impossible.  God  himself  is  not  any  better  than 
he  ought  to  be,  and  the  very  essence  and  glory  of  his 
perfection  is,  that  he  is  just  as  good  as  he  ought  to  be. 
Nay  it  is  the  glory  of  our  standards  of  goodness  them- 
selves, that  they  are  able  to  fashion,  or  construct,  all 
that  is  included  in  the  complete  beauty  of  God. 

Here  then  is  our  first  point,  when  we  attempt  the 
cross  and  sacrifice  of  Christ;  we  must  bring  every 
thing  back  under  the  common  standards  of  eternal  vir- 
tue, and  we  must  find  Christ  doing  and  suffering  just 
what  he  ought,  or  felt  that  he  ought,  neither  more  nor  less. 
That  which  is  to  be  intelligible  must  be  found  within 
the  bounds  of  intelligence.  If  we  can  not  find  a  Saviour 
under  just  our  laws  of  good,  we  shall  find  him  nowhere. 
Looking  for  him  here,  we  shall  not  fail  to  find  him. 

Do  we  then  assume  that  Christ,  in  his  vicarious  sacrifice, 
was  under  obligation  to  do  and  suffer  just  what  he  did  ? 

Christ  fulfill  -^xactty  ^is.  Not  tnat  ne  was  under  ob- 
ing  standard  ob-  ligations  to  another,  but  to  himself.  He 
lotions.  ^s  Godj  fulfilling  the  obligations  of 

God;  just  those  obligations  in  the  eternal  fulfillment  of 
which  God's  perfections  and  beatitudes  are  eternally 
fashioned.  We  transgressors  had  no  claims  upon  him, 
more  than  our  enemies  have  upon  us ;  there  was  none 
above  him  to  enforce  such  obligations.  All  that  he  en- 
dures in  feeling  under  them,  he  endures  freely,  and 
this  it  is  that  constitutes  both  his  greatness  and  joy. 
There  is  an  eternal  cross  in  his  virtue  itself,  and  the  cross 
that  he  endures  in  Christ  only  reveals  what  is  in  those 
common  standards  of  good,  which  are  also  eternally  his. 


IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  59 

I  shall  discuss  this  matter  more  fully,  at  a  more  ad- 
vanced stage  'in  the  argument.  For  the  present  I  prefer 
to  handle  the  subject  in  a  manner  less  speculative, 
showing  that,  as  Christ  is  here  discovered 

.        .  All  good  beings 

in  vicarious  sacrifice,  so  all  good  beings,  in  this  law  of  sac- 
God  in  the  Old  Testament  before  Christ,  rifice> 
the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  times  after  Christ,  and  the  good 
created  minds  both  before  and  after,  are  and  are  to  be, 
in  one  accord  with  Christ,  enduring  the  same  kind  of 
sacrifice.  It  will  seem,  it  may  be,  that  I  am  going  a  long 
way  round  in  such  a  canvassing,  but  the  result  will  be 
that  a  platform  is  gained,  where  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  is 
at  once  less  peculiar  and  far  more  intelligible.  Indeed 
when  it  is  made  plain,  as  a  fact  of  holy  Scripture  slum- 
bering hitherto  in  its  bosom  and  hidden  from  adequate 
discovery,  that  vicarious  sacrifice  is  the  common  prop- 
erty of  holy  virtue  in  all  minds,  uncreated  or  created, 
the  problem  of  such  sacrifice  will  be  effectually  changed, 
and  most  of  the  questions  in  issue  will  be  superseded, 
or  already  settled.  This  present  and  the  two  succeed- 
ing chapters  will  accordingly  be  occupied  with  a  Scrip- 
ture review,  as  in  reference  to  the  point  stated. 

If  it  be  true  that  love  is  a  principle  of  vicarious  sac- 
rifice, then  it  will  be  so,  not  in  Christ  only,  but  as  truly 
in  God  the  Supreme,  or  the  God  of  reve-  The  Suprcmo 
lation  previous  to  Christ's  coming.  I  say  Father  in  vica- 

.  j  f    rious  sacrifice. 

"as  truly"  it  will  be  observed,  not  ot 

course  that  he  will  have  done,  or  endured,  the  same 

things.     Not  even  Christ  did  the  same  things  in  his 


60  THE    ETERNAL    FATHER  PART  I. 

first  year  as  in  his  last,  and  yet  he  was  just  as  truly 
burdened  with  our  evils  and  suffering  in  our  lot ;  for 
the  main  suffering  of  Jesus  was  not,  as  many  coarsely 
imagine,  in  the  pangs  of  his  body  and  cross,  but  in  the 
burdens  that  came  on  his  mind.  In  these  burdens 
God,  as  the  Eternal  Father,  suffered  before  him.  He 
had  his  times  and  eras  appointed,  his  conditions  of 
preparation,  his  modes  of  progress,  and  the  incarnate 
work  was  to  be  done  only  in  the  incarnate  era ;  but  the 
design  was  nevertheless  one  and  the  same  throughout, 
and  was  carried  on  in  the  same  deep  feeling  and  suffer- 
ing sympathy,  from  the  first.  In  the  ante-Christian  era, 
it  may  even  have  been  one  of  the  heaviest  points  of 
sacrifice,  that  there  must  be  so  long  a  detention,  and  that 
so  great  love  must  be  unexpressed,  till  the  fullness 
of  time  was  come.  So  that,  when  Christ  came  it  was 
even  a  kind  of  release,  that  the  letting  forth  of  so  great 
love  into  healing,  and  sympathy,  and  cross,  and  passion, 
was  now  at  last  permitted. 

A  great  many  persons  have  forced  themselves  into  a 

false  antagonism,  by  the  contrast  they  have  undertaken 

to  raise  between  the  Old  Testament  and 

trod  tne  same  in 

the  Old  and  New  the  New.  And  yet  even  such  will 
agree,  returning  so  far  to  the  just  opin- 
ion, that  God  is  God  every  where,  one  and  the  same 
in  all  ages  and  proceedings,  instigated  by  the  same  im- 
pulses, clothed  in  the  same  sympathies,  maintaining  the 
same  patience,  under  the  same  burdens  of  love ;  acting, 
of  course,  in  the  Old  Testament  history,  for  the  same 
ends  of  goodness  that  are  sought  in  the  New.  They  will 


CHAP.  II.  IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  61 

formally  disclaim,  too,  the  opinion  that  trinity  supposes 
a  distinction  of  characters  in  God,  maintaining  his  strict 
homogeneity  as  pertaining  to  his  strict  unity.  They 
go  farther,  they  assert,  as  regards  the  infinite  character, 
that  God  is  love,  that  Christ  came  into  the  world,  be- 
cause God  loved  the  world.  Still  further,  when  it  is 
objected  to  their  schemes  of  atonement,  that  they  seem 
to  imply  an  opinion  that  God  is  made  gentler  and  more 
gracious  by  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  they  disclaim  any 
such  thought  as  that  God  is  ever  mitigated  in  his  dispo- 
tions — the  change,  they  say,  is  wrought  in  us,  or  in  the 
conditions  of  public  justice,  by  which  God's  pardons 
were  restricted. 

And  yet  the  false  antagonism  just  referred  to  remains. 
After  all  such  disclaimers,  it  has  power  to  feed  and  keep 
in  vogue  a  whole  set  of  false  impressions,  or  prejudices, 
by  which  the  God  of  the  Old  Testament  becomes  an- 
other and  virtually  different  being  from  the  Saviour  of 
the  New ;  a  kind  of  Nemesis  that  needs  to  be  propitiated 
by  suffering,  and  is  far  as  possible,  in  himself,  from 
being  in  any  relation  of  vicarious  and  burdened  feeling 
for  mankind.  After  the  point  of  difficulty  has  been 
turned  in  their  schemes  of  atonement,  by  the  protesta- 
tions referred  to,  they  go  their  way,  as  if  said  protesta- 
tions had  no  meaning  at  all,  giving  in  to  a  kind  of  par- 
tisanship for  one  Testament  against  the  other,  and  for 
one  God  against  the  other  God.  As  some  disciples  took 
to  Paul,  and  some  to  Apollos,  so  they  take  to  Christ, 
and  are  much  less  drawn  to  the  God  of  the  law.  There 
is  no  comfort  in  such  a  prejudice;  they  are  consciously 

6 


62  THE    ETERNAL    FATHER  PART  I. 

troubled  by  it.  They  have  a  certain  sense  of  something 
unworthy  and  false  in  the  preference.  It  offends  their 
reverence,  it  raises  the  suspicion  of  some  latent  super- 
stition in  their  modes  of  thought  and  belief.  And  so 
it  damages,  not  their  peace  only,  but  their  piety  itself. 
They  never  can  think  worthily  of  God,  or  serve  him 
evenly  and  with  satisfaction,  as  long  as  they  regard  his 
personal  manifestations,  with  predilections  that  set  him 
in  virtual  disagreement  with  himself. 

All  such  predilections  it  will  easily  be  seen  are  with- 
out foundation.  On  first  principles  they  are  and  must 
No  progress  in  ^e  fictitious ;  for  there  is  and  can  be  no 
God.  such  thing  as  internal  progress  in  God, 
that  is  in  his  character ;  he  was  never  inferior  to  what 
he  now  is,  and  will  never  be  superior — never  worthier, 
greater,  more  happy,  or  more  to  be  admired  and  loved. 
And  yet  there  is  certainly  a  considerable  contrast  in  the 
ways  of  God,  as  presented  in  the  Old  Testament  and  in 
the  Gospel  of  Christ.  There  he  maintains  a  govern- 
ment more  nearly  political  and  earthly ;  here  more 
spiritual  and  heavenly.  There  he  calls  himself  a  man 
of  war;  here  he  shows  himself  a  prince  of  peace. 
There  he  is  more  legal,  appealing  to  interest  in  the  terms 
of  this  life;  here  he  moves  on  the  affections  and  covers 
the  ground  of  eternity.  There  he  maintains  a  drill  of 
observances;  here  he  substitutes  the  inspirations  of 
liberty  and  the  law  written  on  the  heart.  There  he 
operates  oftener  by  force  and  by  mighty  judgments ;  here 
by  the  suffering  patience  of  a  cross. 

Laying  hold  of  this  contrast,  and  quite  willing  to 


CHAP.  II.  JN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  63 

sharpen  it  by  exaggerations,  a  great  many,  taking  on  the 
airs  of  philosophy,  turn  it,  without  any  scruple  of  rev- 
erence, to  the  disadvantage,  or  discredit  of  revelation. 
Affecting  great  admiration  of  Christianity,  they  declare 
that  the  God  of  the  Old  Testament  is  a  lower  being 
and  not  the  same ;  a  barbarian's  God,  a  figment  evident- 
ly of  barbarism  itself.  And  of  those  who  class  as  be- 
lievers, it  results,  in  a  different  way  already  described, 
that  many  are  afflicted  in  the  feeling,  that  the  God  of 
the  law  is  a  God  in  justice  and  retributive  will — doubt- 
less good  in  some  sense,  but  less  amiable — and  that 
Christ  presents  a  better  side  of  deity,  to  which  they 
must  instinctively  cling,  in  a  preference  not  to  be  re- 
strained. They  will  even  profess  sometimes  to  find  shel- 
ter in  one,  against  the  stormy  judgments  of  the  other. 

What  now  shall  we  say  to  this  ?  If  God  is  one,  a 
strict  unity,  always  in  the  same  perfect  character  and 
feeling,  what  account  shall  we  make  of  this  contrast? 
And  by  what  method  shall  we  make  it  appear  that  he 
is  still  the  same,  bearing  the  same  relation  of  feeling  to 
men's  evils  and  sins,  working  in  the  same  great  princi- 
ple of  love  and  sacrifice  ? 

The  solution  is  not  difficult,  if  only  we  make  due 
account  of  the  fact  that,  while  there  is  no  progress,  or 
improvement,  in  God,  there  is  and  should  But  the  gov_ 
be  a  progress  in  his  government  of  the  eminent  of  God 

«        -,          ,.          makes  progress. 

world.     Taken  as  a  plan  of  redemption 
and  spiritual  7estoration,  it  must  be  historical  and  must 
be  unfol3ed  in  ancf  by  a  progressive  revelation.    Begin- 
/    ning,at  a  point  where  men's  ideas  are  low  and  their 

tetez,  „>-      "     " 


64  THE    ETERNAL    FATHER  PART!. 

spiritual  apprehensions  coarse,  it  must  take   hold  of 
them,  at  the  first,  in  such  a  way  as  they  are  capable  of 
being  taken  hold  of.     What  is  political  and  legal,  what 
appeals  to  interest  and  operates  by  stormy  judgments, 
impressing  God's  reality  by  authority,  and  force,  and 
fear,  working  chiefly  on  the  outward  state — breaking 
into  the  soul  by  breaking  into  the  senses — will  be  most 
appropriate  ;  nothing  else  in  fact  will  get  fit  apprehen- 
sion.    There  will  not  even  be  a  language,  at  first,  for 
the  higher  ideas  of  God  and  religion  ;  such  a  language 
*  jpH^*'     must  be  formed  historically,  under  a  growth  of  uses, 
/Y    generating  gradually  a  growth  of  ideas.     Thus  if  we 
conceive  that  holy  virtue  is  constituted  by  a  free  obedi- 
I  en^Jt9  lawJ  the  ^aw  wiH  have  to  be  set  in  first,  by  a 
V  drill  of  observances,  and  then,  when  it  has  been  long 
L  ^Jptr "-  enough  enforced  by  a  restrictive  method,  ideas  may  rise, 
to  r  2»J^^sP^ra^ons  comej  an(l  the  soul  may  pass  on  to  seize 
in  liberty,  what  it  has  bowed  to  in  fear.     This  holds 
true  of  every  man,  and,  in  a  certain  broader  sense,  his- 
^m~    torically,  of  a  people  or  a  world.     The  day  of  ideas, 
thoughts,    sentiments,  words  quickened  to  a  spiritual 
«     meaning,  must  of  necessity  come  after,  and  be  prepared 
by  a  long  and  weary  drill  in  rites,  institutions,  legalities 
and  heavy  laden  centuries  of  public  discipline.     But 
God  will  be  the  same  in  this  day  as  in  that,  in  that  as 
in  this,  cherishing  the  same  purpose,  moving  on  the 
senses,  out  of  the  same  feeling,  in  the  schoolmastering 
era  of  law,  as  in  the  grace  of  the  cross  itself.     Becom- 
ing, at  the  first,  in  a  certain  sense,  a  barbarian  people's 
God,  he  only  submits  to  conditions  of  necessity  by 

(L  <?TW*lX~'    <r>^    ; 


, 


CHAP.  II.  IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  65 

which  he  is  confronted,  in  preparing  to  be  known,  as 
the  God  of  love  and  sacrifice,  and  Saviour  of  the  world. 
Neither  is  it  any  discredit  to  him  that  the  subjects  of 
his  goodness  must  be  manipulated  outwardly  and 
roughly,  and  brought  on  thus  historically,  till  some 
higher  capabilities  of  feeling  and  perception  are  de- 
veloped. 

To  simplify  the  general  subject  as  far  as  possible,  take, 
for  example,  the  single  point  in  which  the  hasty  and 
shallow  thinkers  of  the  unbelieving  world     Partisanship  of 
have  been  most  commonly  scandalized ;    the  old  religion, 
viz.,  the  exclusiveness  of  the  old  religion.     God,  they 
insist,  is  the  Creator,  Lord,  and  Father  of  all  men — not 
of  any  one  people  ;  but  this  old  religion  holds  him  forth 
in  promise  as  the  God  of  a  chosen  people,  taking  them 
as  clients  in  specialty,  apart  from,  and,  in  some  sense, 
against  the  whole  world  beside.     How  very  unlike  to 
the  God  of  Christianity,  erecting  a  kingdom  of  univer- 
sal love  and  suffering  sacrifice.     And  yet  plainly  there 
was  no  other  way  to  get  hold  of  the  low  sentiment  of 
the  world  and  raise  it,  but  to  begin  thus  with  a  partisan, 
chosen  people's  mercy,  and  get  himself  revealed  by' 
light  and  shade,  as  between  his  people  and  others; 
creating  a  religion  that  is  next  thing  to  a  prejudice. 
He  could  not  be  revealed,  as  .any  one  may  see,  in  his 
own  measures,  but  only  in  such  measures  as  he  found 
prepared.     To  bolt  himself  into  men's  thoughts,  when 
they  had  no  thoughts,  was  impossible.  •  He  could  only 
come  into  such  thoughts  and  sentiments  as  there  were. 
The  little,  darkened,  partisan  soul  must  know  him  as 


66  THE    ETERNAL    FATHER  PART!. 

it  can,  and  not  as  he  is.  The  nations,  too,  of  that  day 
boasted  each  a  god  of  their  own,  whom  they  took  and 
praised,  for  what  he  could  do  for  them,  and  against  the 
gods  of  the  other  nations.  A  god  was  no  god  who 
could  not  perch  on  their  banners,  and  fight  out  their 
wars,  trampling  all  other  gods  by  his  power.  Hence  the 
necessity  that  Jehovah  should  choose  him  a  people. 
And  so  it  was  that  by  overtopping  all  other  deities, 
in  his  glorious  protectorship,  he  finally  made  himself 
known  as  God  over  all — the  true  Supreme  and  Saviour 
of  all. 

If  he  had  announced  himself,  at  the  very  first,  as  the 
God  alike  and  Saviour  of  all  men,  if  he  had  been  forth- 
with incarnate  and  had  shown  himself  in  Moses'  day, 
by  the  suffering  life  and  death  of  his  Son,  the  history 
would  have  been  a  barren  riddle  only.  They  were  not 
equal  to  the  conceiving  of  any  such  disinterested  sacri- 
fice ;  and  the  fact  that  it  proposed  a  salvation  for  all 
men  would  have  been  enough,  by  itself,  to  quite  turn 
away  their  faith.  I  verily  believe  that  Jesus,  coming, 
thus  and  then,  would  not  even  have  been  remembered 
in  history.  And  yet  there  was  a  promise,  long  before, 
of  which  nobody  took  the  meaning,  that,  in  this  one 
people,  somehow,  all  nations  should  be  eventually 
blessed ;  and  the  prophets,  too,  as  the  religious  sense 
grew  more  enlarged,  finally  began  to  break  out  in  bold 
and  strong  visions  of  a  universal  kingdom  and  glory  ; 
in  which  it  may  be  seen  that  God  was  preparing,  even 
from  the  first,  to  be  finally  known  as  the  Lord  and  Sav- 
iour of  the  whole  world. 


CIIAP.  II.  IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  67 

Does  lie  then,  by  condescending  to  the  lowness  of 
barbarous  mind,  and  consenting  to  begin  with  a  relig- 
ion of  prejudice,  when  there  was  no  higher  sentiment 
to  begin  with,  or  be  revealed  in — does  God's  love  suf- 
he  by  choosing  out  one  people,  in  this  fers  by  detention, 
manner,  show  that  his  character  is  equal  to  nothing 
higher  ?  Ah,  what  struggles  of  suffering  patience  had 
he  rather  to  endure,  in  these  long  ages  of  training, 
under  such  narrow  and  meager  possibilities !  Nowhere 
else,  it  seems  to  me,  not  even  in  the  cross  of  Jesus  itself, 
does  he  reveal  more  wonderfully  the  greatness  and  self- 
sacrificing  patience  of  his  feeling.  And  the  fact  breaks 
out,  all  along  down  the  course  of  the  history — appear- 
ing and  reappearing,  by  how  many  affecting  declarations 
— that  he  is  waiting  for  a  better  possibility,  waiting  to 
open  his  whole  heart's  love,  and  be  known  by  what  he 
can  bear  and  do  for  the  world  of  mankind.  Nor  was 
there  any  moment  of  relief  to  him  so  blessed  probably, 
as  when  he  came  to  Mary  with  his  "  all  hail,"  and  broke 
into  the  world  as  God  with  us ;  God  now  come  at  last,  to 
disburden  his  heart  by  sacrifice.  The  retention  before 
was  a  greater  burden  on  his  feeling,  we  may  well  believe, 
than  his  glorious  outbirth  into  loss  and  suffering  now. 

Taking  now  this  yery  crowded,  insufficiently  stated 
solution  of  his  relation  to  the  times  of  the  Old  Testament, 
you  will  find  it  borne  out,  in  every  point,  God  m  sacrifice  by 
by  a  careful  review  of  the  whole  Scrip-  Scripture  testimony, 
ture ;  and  that  Christ,  in  his  vicarious  sacrifice,  only 
represents  the  feeling  of  God  in  all  the  preceding  ages. 


68  THE    ETERNAL    FATHER  PART  I. 

The  principle  of  love,  as  we  have  already  seen,  is 
itself  a  principle  of  vicarious  sacrifice,  causing  every 
one  that  is  in  it  to  be  entered  into  the  want,  woe,  loss, 
and  even  ill-desert  of  every  other ;  bearing  even  adver- 
saries and  enemies,  just  as  Christ  bore  his.  But  God  is 
love  and  is  so  declared  in  every  part  of  the  Scripture ; 
and  what  have  we  in  this,  but  the  discovery  that  he  is 
a  being,  in  just  such  a  relation  of  sympathy  and  bur- 
dened feeling  for  men,  as  Christ  was.  He  did  not  show 
it  by  the  same  outward  signs,  and  therefore  could  not 
so  powerfully  and  transformingly  impress  the  fact ;  and 
yet  he  was  in  the  same  precise  love,  waiting,  as  we  just 
now  said,  to  find  relief  in  a  more  adequate  expression. 
Yet  how  often,  how  affectingly,  did  he  express,  in 
words,  the  painful  sympathy  and  deep  burden  of  his 
feeling.  As  when  the  prophet  says — "  In  their  afflic- 
tion he  was  afflicted,  and  the  angel  of  his  presence 
saved  them ;  in  his  love  and  pity,  he  redeemed  them, 
and  bare  and  carry  them,  all  the  days  of  old."  How 
tenderly  does  he  watch  the  turning  of  the  ages — 
"  grieved  forty  years  "  for  his  people  in  the  wilderness — 
"  rising  betimes  "  to  send  his  messengers — protesting 
that  he  is  "  weary  " — that  he  is  "  broken  with  their  whor- 
ish  heart " — "that  he  is  filled  with  repentings  " — calling 
also  to  his  people  to  see  how  "  the  Lord  their  God  bare 
them  as  a  man  doth  bear  his  son  "—apostrophizing  them, 
as  it  were,  in  a  feeling  quite  broken,  "  Oh,  that  there 
were  such  a  heart  in  them,  that  they  would  hear  me 
and  keep  my  commandments  " — "  How  shall  I  give  thee 
up,  Ephraim,  how  shall  I  deliver  thee,  Israel  ?" — and 


CHAP.  II.  IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  69 

again,  "Yea,  I  have  loved  thee  with  an  everlasting  love, 
and  with  loving  kindness  have  I  drawn  thee."  It  is  as 
if  there  were  a  cross  unseen,  standing  on  its  undiscov- 
ered hill,  far  back  in  the  ages,  out  of  which  were  sound- 
ing always,  just  the  same  deep  voice  of  suffering  love 
and  patience,  that  was  heard  by  mortal  ears  from  the 
sacred  hill  of  Calvary. 

And  then,  when  Christ  himself  arrives,  what  does  he 
say  but  that,  "  God  so  loved  the  world  that  he  sent  his 
only  begotten  son  ?" — not  that  he  came  to  obtain  God's 
love,  but  that  God's  love  sent  him  and  was  here  to  be 
magnified,  in  the  sacrifice  of  life  he  would  make.  And 
who  is  Christ  but  God  manifest  in  the  flesh,  reconciling 
the  world  unto  himself;  the  express  image  and  word  of 
God ;  that  is  God  expressed  as  he  is,  so  that  he  that 
hath  seen  him  hath  seen  the  Father ;  working  always  for, 
and  to  declare,  the  God  that  sent  him.  Neither  does  he 
conceive,  that  he  is  introducing  a  new  kingdom  and 
order,  that  is  worthier  of  God,  and  in  better  feeling. 
He  declares  that  he  came  not  to  destroy  the  old  system, 
or  law,  but  only  to  fulfill  it  and  carry  it  on  to  the  glo- 
rious realization  of  its  ends,  opening  things  that  have 
been  kept  secret,  but  have  all  the  time  been  work- 
ing, from  the  foundation  of  the  world ;  nay,  that  his 
kingdom  is  a  kingdom  prepared  from  the  foundation  of 
the  world;  prepared  that  is  in  God's  love,  fixed  in 
his  purpose,  working  in  his  counsels.  What  then  was 
Christ  in  his  vicarious  feeling  and  sacrifice,  what  in  his 
Gethsemane,  but  a  revelation  in  time,  of  just  that  love 
that  had  been  struggling  always  in  God's  bosom ;  watch- 


70  THE    ETERNAL    FATHER  PART  I. 

ing  wearily  for  the  world  and  with  inward  groanings 
unheard  by  mortal  ears. 

But  there  is,  after  all,  some  one  will  say,  a  something 
in  Christ  that  is  more  gentle  and  better  to  feeling — less 

ehristnot  better,  severity,  kinder,  softer  terms  of  good, 
but  more  adequate-  There  certainly  is  a  fuller,  more  ade- 
quate, expression  of  God's  love ;  and  so 
a  greater  power  of  attraction,  thus  of  salvation.  And 
yet  there  are  denunciations  of  future  evil  in  his  teach- 
ings, that,  taken  as  they  stand,  are  as  much  more  fear- 
ful than  any  which  are  found  in  the  Old  Testament,  as 
they  relate  to  what  is  more  future  and  of  longer  dura- 
tion. I  will  not  here  discuss  them,  I  only  say  that, 
take  what  view  of  them  is  possible,  it  does  not  appear 
that  Christ,  in  bearing  the  world's  evil,  does  at  all  con- 
sent to  the  possible  immunity  of  transgression.  If  he 
might  consent  to  that,  then  he  might  well  enough  con- 
sent to  the  continuance  of  transgression  also,  and  so  be 
excused  from  the  sacrifice  of  the  cross  altogether. 

God  then  is  such  a  being  from  eternity  as  must,  by 
the  supposition,  be  entered,  even  as  Christ  was,  into  all 

.    that  belongs  to  love :  entered  into  pa- 
God  then  is  just 

what  Christ  shows  tience,  long  suffering,  and  sacrifice  ;  bur- 
dened in  heart  for  the  good  of  enemies ; 
taking  on  his  feeling  the  wants  and  woes  of  enemies. 
This  is  no  new  thought,  no  optional,  superlative  good- 
ness taken  up  by  Christ  in  the  year  One,  of  the  Chris- 
tian era ;  but  the  whole  deity  is  in  it,  in  it  from  eter- 
nity. And  the  short  account  of  all  is — "  For  God  so 
loved  the  world." 


CHAP.H.          IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  71 

Holding  now  this  view  of  God — the  same  which  the 
Psalmist  boasts  when  he  sings,  "For  God  is  my  king  of 
old  working,  salvation  in  the  midst  of  the  Current  miscon. 
earth  " — we  encounter  a  large  body  of  conceptions. 
current  misconceptions,  mostly  under  Gospel  terms  of 
expression,  which  require  to  be  modified  if  we  are  to 
hold  the  truth  understandingly. 

Thus  we  speak  of  Christ  as  a  mediator,  and  as  doing 
a  work  of  mediation  ;  which  is  Scriptural,  but  we  often 
conceive  that  he  is  literally  a  third  being, 

Mediation. 

coming  m  between  us  and  God  to  compose 
our  difficulty  with  him,  by  gaining  him  as  it  were  to  softer 
terms.  But  he  is  no  such  mediator  at  all,  nor  any  media- 
tor, such  as  does  not  leave  him  to  be  God  manifest  in  all 
God's  proper  feeling.  No,  he  is  a  mediator  only  in  the 
sense  that,  as  being  in  humanity,  he  is  a  medium  of 
God  to  us ;  such  a  medium  that,  when  we  cling  to  him 
in  faith,  we  take  hold  of  God's  own  life  and  feeling  as 
the  Infinite  Unseen,  and  are  taken  hold  of  by  Him, 
reconciled,  and  knit  everlastingly  to  him,  by  what  we 
receive. 

We  call  Christ  our  intercessor,  too,  and  conceive  that 
we  are  saved  by  his  intercession.  Does  he  then  intercede 
for  us  in  the  sense  that  he  goes  before  God 

Intercession. 

in  a  plea  to  gain  him  over  to  us,  showing 
God  his  wounds,  and  the  print  of  his  nails,  to  soften 
him  towards  us.  Far  from  that  as  posssible;  nothing 
could  be  more  unworthy.  Intercession  means  literally 
intervention,  that  is  a  coming  between ;  and  it  is  not  God 
that  wants  to  be  softened,  or  made  better;  for  Christ 


72  THE    ETERNAL    FATHER  PART  I. 

himself  is  only  the  incarnate  love  and  sacrificing  pa- 
tience of  God ;  but  the  stress  of  the  intercession  is  with 
us  and  in  our  hearts'  feeling — all  which  we  simply  figure, 
objectively,  when  we  conceive  him  as  the  priest  that 
liveth  ever  to  make  intercession  for  us.  We  set  him 
before  God's  altar,  in  a  figure  of  eternal  sponsorship, 
urging  the  suit  of  peace ;  though  the  peace  he  obtains 
by  the  suit  of  his  sacrifice,  comes,  in  fact,  from  our  miti- 
gation, not  from  the  mitigation  of  God. 

Other  modes  of  speaking,  supposed  to  be  understood 
in  their  Scriptural  meaning,  will  not  be  accomodated  by 
the  conception  that  unites  the  God  of 
the  old  time  and  the  Christ  of  the  new,  in 
the  same  vicarious  feeling,  but  will  require  to  have  their 
colors  softened  by  similar  explanations.  And  it  will  not 
be  difficult,  I  rejoice  to  believe,  for  any  genuinely  thought- 
ful, right-feeling  soul,  to  lay  hold  of  the  possibility  thus 
offered,  of  a  conception  of  God  that  does  not  mock  his 
attributes,  or  set  them  at  war  with  each  other.  How 
distracting  and  painful,  how  dreadfully  appalling  is  the 
faith  that  we  have  a  God,  back  of  the  worlds,  whose  in- 
dignations overtop  his  mercies,  and  who  will  not  be 
satisfied,  save  as  he  is  appeased  by  some  other,  who  is 
in  a  better  and  milder  feeling.  We  might  easily  fear 
him,  but  how  shall  we  love  him ;  and  where,  meantime, 
shall  we  find  that  glorious,  all-centering  unity  in  the 
good,  which  our  sufficiently  distracted  soul  longs  for  in 
the  God  of  its  worship  ?  What  can  we  do  as  sinners, 
torn  already  by  our  own  evils,  with  two  Gods,  a  less 
good,  and  a  better — this  latter,  suffering  and  even  dying 


CHAP.  II.  IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  73 

to  compose  and  sweeten  the  other  ?  Where  shall  our 
heart  rest  when  our  thought  itself  is  bent  hither  and 
thither,  and  torn  by  a  God  in  no  unity  with  Himself? 

Here  then  I  think  we  may  rest  in  the  full  and  care- 
fully tested  discovery,  that  whatever  we  may  say,  or 
hold,  or  believe,  concerning  the  vicarious 

A  cross  in  God' s 

sacrifice  of  Christ,  we  are  to  affirm  in  the  perfections  from 
same  manner  of  God.  The  whole  deity  eternitr- 
is  in  it,  in  it  from  eternity  and  will  to  eternity  be.  We 
are  not  to  conceive  that  our  blessed  Saviour  is  some 
other  and  better  side  of  deity,  a  God  composing  and 
satisfying  God  ;  but  that  all  there  is  in  him  expresses 
God,  even  as  he  is,  and  has  been  of  old — such  a  being 
in  his  love  that  he  must  needs  take  our  evils  on  his 
feeling,  and  bear  the  burden  of  our  sin.  Nay,  there  is 
a  cross  in  God  before  the  wood  is  seen  upon  Calvary ; 
hid  in  God's  own  virtue  itself,  struggling  on  heavily 
in  burdened  feeling  through  all  the  previous  ages,  and 
struggling  as  heavily  now  even  in  the  throne  of  the 
worlds.  This,  too,  exactly,  is  the  cross  that  our  Christ 
crucified  reveals  and  sets  before  us.  Let  us  come  then 
not  to  the  wood  alone,  not  to  the  nails,  not  to  the  vine- 
gar and  the  gall,  not  to  the  writhing  body  of  Jesus,  but 
to  the  very  feeling  of  our  God  and  there  take  shelter. 
Seeing  how  God  bears  an  enemy — has  borne  or  carried 
enemies  all  the  days  of  old — we  say  "Herein  is  Love," 
and  in  this  grand  Tcoinonia — this  fellowship  of  the  Fa- 
ther and  his  Son,  Jesus  Christ — our  very  unworthy  and 
very  distracting  preferences  are  forever  merged  and 
lost. 

7 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE. 

HAVING  showed,  in  my  last  chapter,  that  the  Creator 
and  God  of  the  former  dispensation,  sometimes  called  the 
Father  in  that  relation,  was  inserted  into  our  human 
conditions,  in  just  the  same  vicarious  feeling  as  Christ 
was  in  his  incarnate  suffering,  and  bore  our  sins  as  truly, 
and  wrestled  for  us  in  the  same  tender  burdens  of  love, 
I  now  undertake  to  show  the  same  in  respect  to  the 
Holy  Spirit  after  Christ ;  that  he  works  in  love  as  Christ 
did,  and  suffers  all  the  incidents  of  love — compassion, 
wounded  feeling,  sorrow,  concern,  burdened  sympathy, 
violated  patience — taking  men  upon  him,  to  bear  them 
and  their  sins,  precisely  as  Christ  himself  did  in  his 
sacrifice.  He  is,  in  fact,  a  Christ  continued,  in  all  that 
distinguishes  the  offering  and  priesthood  of  Christ,  and 
is  fitly  represented  in  the  same  way,  under  a  priestly 
figure,  as  our  intercessor. 

I  am  well  aware  how  very  distant  all  such  conceptions 
are  from  the  commonly  received  impressions  of  the 

The  Holy  Spirit    ^   SPirit'      F°r    U    ls    a    remarkable 

in  personal  feeling  fact,   apart  from   all  conceptions  of  a 
properly  vicarious  sacrifice  in  his  minis- 
try, that  even  where  his  personality  is  much  insisted  on, 
almost  nothing  is  left  him  commonly  in  the  matter  of 


CHAP.  III.  THE    HOLY    SPIRIT,    ETC.  75 

feeling  and  character,  that,  belongs  to  personality. 
Probably  enough  the  reason  may  be  that  when  we  pray, 
as  we  familiarly  do,  that  God  will  send,  or  give,  the 
Holy  Spirit ;  or  shed  down,  or  shed  abroad,  or  pour  out, 
or  breathe  the  Holy  Spirit ;  we  allow  such  figures  to 
carry  their  meaning  too  literally,  and  so  fall  into  the 
way  of  regarding  him,  unwittingly,  as  a  mere  influence ; 
some  invisible  missive,  or  fluid,  or  magnetic  force,  trav- 
ersing unseen,  the  hidden  depths  of  souls,  to  work  God's 
purpose  in  them.  However  this  may  be,  it  certainly 
comes  to  pass,  somehow,  that  we  practically  lose  out 
the  conception  of  a  genuinely  personal  character  and 
life,  as  pertaining  to  the  Holy  Spirit.  And,  in  this 
view,  it  becomes  a  matter  of  great  spiritual  consequence, 
apart  from  the  particular  subject  I  have  in  hand,  to  re- 
store a  juster  and  more 'vital  conception  of  the  Spirit, 
such  as  I  am  undertaking  now  to  assert.  I  begin  then 
by  a  distinct  recognition — 

1.  Of  the  personality  of  the  Spirit,  insisting  that,  if 
it  be  asserted  at  all,  as  it  certainly  should  be,  it  must  be 
asserted  with  a  meaning  and  not  with-  Per80nality  that 

OUt.       It    is    Very    true    that    the    word    makes  no  true  per- 

Spirit  [Vveu/xa]  is  a  neuter  noun,  drawing  s 
after  it  the  neuter  pronoun  it.  But  this  is  only  because 
the  natural  symbol  resorted  to,  viz.,  breath,  happened 
to  be  a  neuter  word.  Still  there  are  other  terms  applied 
to  the  Spirit,  which  bear  the  very  highest  character  of 
personality.  Thus  he  is  promised  as  being  even  Christ 
himself—"  I  will  come  to  you ;"  and  is  called,  with 
Christ,  Paraclete,  Advocate,  Comforter,  another  Com- 


76  THE    HOLY    SPIRIT  PART! 

forter — and  the  personal  pronoun  he  is  applied  to  him, 
just  as  it  is  to  the  Father  and  the  Son.  I  raise  no  ques- 
tion here  upon  the  nature  of  this  personality.  I  only 
say  that  he  is  a  person,  in  just  the  same  personal  proper- 
ties of  feeling,  love,  sacrifice,  as  the  Father  and  the  Son, 
and  that,  being  perfect  in  character,  he  must  have  ex- 
actly the  same  character.  Besides,  according  to  all 
right  conceptions  of  trinity,  God  is  still  a  strict  unity, 
or  undivided  substance,  not  three  substances  ;  and  so,  on 
the  score  of  unity,  as  before  on  the  score  of  personal- 
ity, the  Holy  Spirit  must  be  more  than  a  divine  some- 
what, emptied  of  all  divine  graces  and  perfections — the 
full  and  perfect  God,  even  as  that  same  fullness  dwelt 
in  Jesus  bodily.  The  Holy  Spirit  works  thus  in  a  min- 
istry of  love  precisely  as  Jesus  did,  and  the  love  is  just 
the  same  kind  of  love,  burdened  for  men,  burdened  for 
enemies,  heaving  in  silent  agonies  of  passion  to  recover 
and  save;  fulfilling  in  every  particular  the  Christly 
terms  of  sacrifice.  Again — 

2.  It  requires,  every  one  may  easily  perceive,  quite 

as  much  suffering  patience,  and  affliction  of  feeling,  or 

The  work  of  the   even  of  what  is  called  passion,  to  carry 

Spirit  is  in  sacrifice.   on  t]ie  wor^  of  fae  Spirit,  as  it  did  to 

fulfill  the  ministry  and  bear  the  cross  of  Jesus.  In  the 
first  place,  the  work  of  the  Spirit  covers  the  whole 
ground  of  human  life,  broad  as  the  world  is,  and  con- 
tinues through  all  the  untold  generations  of  time.  And 
in  this  world- wide  operation  he  is  enduring,  not  Pilate, 
and  the  soldiers,  and  a  few  Jewish  priests,  but  the  con- 
tradiction of  all  sinners  that  live.  He  is  betrayed  by 


CHAP.  III.        JN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  77 

more  then  Judas,  denied  by  more  than  Peter ;  strug- 
gling on,  from  age  to  age,  with  all  the  falsities,  and 
treasons,  and  corruptions,  all  the  unspeakable  disgusts 
of  all  bosom  perversity ;  acting,  and  suffering,  not  be- 
fore them  indeed  as  Christ  did,  but  as  it  were  in  perpet- 
ual contact  with  them. 

Neither  let  us  imagine,  as  too  many  do,  in  their  su- 
perficial haste,  that  the  principal  suffering  and  sacrifice 
of  Christ  consisted  in  the  pains  he  bore  in  his  body. 
The  pains  of  his  moral  sensibility,  the  burdens  that  op- 
pressed his  vicarious  feeling,  cost  him  more  than  his 
cross,  as  any  one  may  see  who  takes  the  meaning  of  his 
Gethsemane.  Indeed  this  one  look  down  into  the 
depth  of  his  djvine  feeling  seems  to  have  been  permit- 
ted us,  that  our  mind  might  be  taken  away  from  the 
foolish  opinion  that  his  principal  sacrifice  lay  in  the 
pangs  of  a  few  hours'  bodily  suffering.  Indeed  these 
bodily  pains  of  Christ  on  the  cross  appear  to  be  a  kind 
of  condescension  rather  to  our  coarseness,  that  he  might 
raise  an  outward  flag  of  distress  for  our  dull  sensuous 
nature  to  look  upon  ;  while  to  him,  the  principal  woe  is 
that  which,  as  incarnate  love,  he  bore  all  through  his 
ministry,  in  his  griefs,  disgusts,  and  wounded  sensibili- 
ties ;  that  which  once  or  twice  he  barely  speaks  of,  as 
when  he  says  "  now  is  my  soul  troubled ;"  that  which 
made  him,  to  his  friends,  "a  man  of  sorrows;"  that 
which,  in  the  garden,  took  hold  of  him,  even  as  an 
agony,  the  most  appalling  scene  of  tragedy  ever  beheld 
in  our  world.  In  a  quiet,  silent  hour,  when  his  person 
is  threatened  by  no  appearance  of  danger,  the  wail  of 


78  THE    IIOLY    SPIRIT  PART  I. 

his  burdened  heart  breaks  out  in  a  way  of  intensity  that 
is  even  terrible ;  while  in  his  trial  and  mockery,  and  the 
bodily  torture  of  his  death,  his  serenity  is  more  remark- 
able even  than  his  distress.  Perceiving  thus  how  the 
real  pain  of  Jesus,  that  which  constituted  the  principal 
cost  of  his  sacrifice,  was  the  burden  that  lay  upon  his 
feeling,  baffled  and  wronged  as  that  feeling  ever  was, 
we  are  let  into  the  precise  conception  of  that  equally 
heavy  burden  that  is  borne  by  the  Spirit  always.  And 
this  long,  weary  draft  upon  his  patience,  his  disgusts, 
and  wounded  sensibilities — this  it  is  that  makes  his  in- 
tercession. We  pass  now — 

3.  To  that  which  is  to  be  more  decisive  than  our  own 
thoughts  or  constructive  endeavors,  viz.,,  to  the  direct 

Scripture  rep-   exhibitions  of  the  Scripture  itself.     And 

reseutations.  ^ere,  smce  j  must  abridge  the  review  as 
much  as  possible,  I  will  pass  all  the  more  casual  notifi- 
cations of  the  Spirit  which  speak  of  doing  him  "  de- 
spite," of  his  being  "grieved,"  and  "vexed," and  "lied 
unto,"  and  "  resisted ;"  that  show  the  eminently  Christly 
"  gifts  of  healing  "  ministered  by  him,  allowing  it  also 
to  be  said  of  him  as  of  Christ — "  Himself  took  our  in- 
firmities and  bare  our  sicknesses;"  that  call  him 
"Christ,"  and  "the  Spirit  of  Christ,"  and  "Christ 
dwelling  in  us,"  and  "Christ  living  in  us" — in  all 
which  it  is  made  clear  that  he  has  all  the  sentiment,  and 
sensibility,  and  even  wounded  sensibility,  of  Christ  him- 
self— Christ's  equivalent  in  short,  abiding  in  the  heart. 

Having  merely  alluded  to  these  very  significant 
tokens,  I  go  on  to  notice  three  principal  conceptions 


_ 

CHAP.  III.  IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFI 


under  which  the  intercessory  character  and  feeling  of 
the  Spirit  are  specially  displayed. 

Thus,  first  of  all,  he  goes  into  the  ministry  of  Christ 
with  him  and  upon  him,  as  the  qualifying  impulse,  in 
some  sense,  of  his  work;  resting  upon  with  Christ  in 
him  as  a  dove  in  his  baptism;  leading  h»  ministry. 
him  into  and  through  the  great  soul-struggle  of  the 
temptation;  bestowed  upon  him  "without  measure" 
in  his  doctrine ;  travailing  with  him,  last  of  all,  in  his 
Gethsemane  and  his  cross ;  so  that  we  may  say,  when  all 
is  done,  "who  through  the  eternal  Spirit  offered  himself 
without  spot  to  God."  Instigator  thus,  and  upholder 
of  Jesus,  in  all  his  ministry  and  sacrifice,  how  strange 
is  the  inversion  we  make,  when  we  allow  ourselves  to 
think  of  him  as  being  only  a  bare  impersonal  force 
or  influence ! 

A  second  and  partly  reverse,  though  really  agreeing 
conception  of  the  Spirit  is  met,  in  his  appointed  vicar- 
ship,  or  substituted  ministry,  acting^  in  Takeg  christ,8 
the  place  of  Christ  himself.  Thus  Christ  place  and  con- 
declaring  to  his  disciples,  "  it  is  expedient  tinues  his  work' 
for  you  that  I  go  away,"  promises  the  Spirit  as  "  an- 
other Comforter  "  in  his  place.  And  the  reason  of  the 
substitution  is  not  difficult.  Having  brought  on  his 
outwardly  historic  work  to  a  close,  Christ  perceives  that 
his  permanent,  or  protracted  stay  in  the  flesh  and  before 
the  senses,  would  be  rather  a  hindrance  than  a  help  to 
farther  progress.  If  it  were  possible  for  him,  as  a 
visible  Saviour  and  resident,  to  win  disciples  all  over 
the  world  and  in  all  ages,  they  would  yet  be  disciples 


80  THE    HOLY    SPIRIT  PART  L 

not  of  faith,  but  of  the  eyes ;  aching  still  to  see  him, 
more  than  to  be  like  him ;  thronging  on  to  his  seat  as 
pilgrims  over  continents  and  seas ;  yet  not  one  in  a  hun- 
dred of  them  ever  getting  near  enough  to  speak  with 
him ;  wanting  all,  of  course,  a  visible  kingdom  since  they 
have  a  visible  king.  Therefore  he  declares  a  change  of 
administration — that  the  Christ  of  the  eye  is  to  be 
withdrawn,  and  the  Spirit,  an  invisible,  diffusive,  per- 
vasive, every  where  present,  always  abiding,  Christ  sub- 
stituted— a  Christ  whom  no  distance  can  remove,  whom 
the  sick  man  can  have  in  his  chamber,  the  prisoner  in 
his  dungeon,  the  exile  in  his  place  of  banishment,  the 
martyr  in  his  fires ;  present  to  the  heart,  more  present 
than  looks,  or  words ;  present  where  the  eye  is  blind 
and  can  not  see  him,  and  the  ear  is  deaf  and  can  not 
hear  him  speak.  And  yet  he  is  to  be  the  consciously 
felt  Christ.  "  The  world  seeth  ine  not  but  ye  see  me." 
"At  that  day  ye  shall  know  that  I  am  in  my  Father 
and  ye  in  me  and  I  in  you."  In  him,  as  their  living 
interpreter,  present  to  consciousness  in  all  the  senti- 
ment, love,  sacrifice,  of  the  Father  and  the  Son,  the 
disciples  are  always  to  know  the  ascended  Lord  of  their 
hearts,  and  be  kept  in  the  sense  of  his  society  and  even 
of  his  burdened  sympathy  itself. 

This  brings  us  to  a  third  Scripture  conception  of  the 

Spirit,  where  the  vicarious  working  is  even  more  for- 

Has  his  Geth-   mally  displayed  * — "  Likewise  the  Spirit 

semane.       a]so  helpeth  our  infirmities  ;  for  we  know 

not  what  we  should  pray  for  as  we  ought,  but  the  Spirit 

*  Rom.  viii,  26-7. 


CHAP.  III.         IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  81 

itself  maketh  intercession  for  us  with  groanings  that  can 
not  be  uttered.  And  he  that  searcheth  the  hearts,  know- 
eth  what  is  the  mind  of  the  Spirit,  because  he  maketh 
intercession  for  the  saints  according  to  the  will  of  God." 

Our  translators  appear  to  have  looked  upon  it  as  a 
thing  quite  unsupposable,  that  any  priestly  and  vicari- 
ous working  pertains  to  the  ministry  of  the  Spirit,  and 
have  cast  the  words  of  their  version  accordingly,  so  as 
to  make  it  a  great  deal  less  distinctly  vicarious  than  the 
original.  Besides  it  would  be  nearly  impossible  to  so 
translate  the  passage  as  to  give  it,  in  English,  the  full 
vicarious  typology  and  substitutive  import  of  the  orig- 
inal Greek  version.  Thus  our  English  word  helpeth — 
["helpeth  our  infirmities"] — represents  a  long  Greek 
word  compounded  of  two  prepositions  and  a  verb ;  the 
preposition  with  indicating  a  conjunction  of  sympathy, 
the  preposition  instead  of,  indicating  substitution,  and 
the  verb  taking  Jiol/l  of  as  in  participation ;  *  precisely  the 
same  verb  in  precisely  the  same  phrase  which  is  trans- 
lated, "took  our  infirmities," f  in  the  remarkable  pas- 
sage that  declares  the  vicarious  assumption  of  our  bodily 
infirmities  and  evils  by  Christ;  only  there  the  verb  is 
not  intensified  by  the  prepositions  here  compounded 
with  it.  Are  we  then  to  judge  that  a  much  stronger 
word  of  vicarious  assumption  is  here  to  be  emptied 
of  every  such  import,  and  translated  simply  "  helpeth  " 
because  it  refers  to  the  Holy  Spirit  ? 

Again  it  is  to  be  specially  noted  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
is  twice  represented  in  this  passage  under  the  priestly 

*  ffvvavTi\ap0avtTat.  f  Matth.  viii,  17. 


82  THE    HOLY    SPIRIT  PART  L 

figure  of  making  intercession ;  the  same  which  is  ap- 
plied to  Christ  in  but  a  single  instance,  and  becomes, 
The  riesti  *n  ^Q  estimation  of  many  teachers,  the 
conception  of  his  the  crowning  doctrine  of  his  mediator- 
ship.  Precisely  how  much,  or  what  is  to 
be  understood  by  this  intercession,  as  affirmed  of  Christ, 
it  may  be  difficult  to  settle.  The  word  means  literally 
to  intervene  for,  as  when  a  friend  intervenes  between  a 
superior  and  an  inferior,  to  obtain  some  act  of  forgive- 
ness, or  help  from  the  former.  There  is  somewhat  of  a 
mediatorial  character  in  the  intervention,  somewhat  also 
of  a  vicarious  character,  inasmuch  as  the  intervening  or 
interceding  party  is  supposed  to  have  the  case  of  the 
humbler  and  more  dejected  one  upon  his  own  feeling, 
and  to  be  a  volunteer  bearer  of  his  burden  for  him.  In 
the  case  of  the  Spirit  the  vicarious,  substitutive  charac- 
ter of  the  intervention  or  intercession  is  grammatically 
intensified,  when  compared  with  the  intercession  ascribed 
to  Christ,  by  the  doubling  of  the  preposition  for,  com- 
pounding it,  first  with  the  verb,  and  then  placing  it 
again  before  the  noun  or  subject.*  The  intercession 
ascribed  to  Christ — "able  to  save  them  to  the  uttermost 
them  that  come  unto  God  by  him,  seeing  he  ever  liveth 
to  make  intercession  for  them  " — plainly  enough  repre- 
sents the  reconciling  work  he  is  able  to  do  in  souls, 
under  the  objective  and  priestly  figure  of  a  perpetual  of- 
fering to  God,  for  the  propitiation  of  God  to  them.  The 
intercession  of  the  Spirit  on  the  other  hand  is  subject- 
ively conceived  and  not  otherwise,  for  his  ministry  is 

virip  >ipwv» 


C'IJAP.  III.  iy     VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  83 

only  subjective  in  men's  hearts ;  it  is  the  wrestling  with- 
in of  his  own  divine  sympathy  and  suffering  love,  to 
raise  them  into  accord  with  God's  mind  and  the  secret 
motions  of  his  goodness ;  thus  to  give  insight  and  power 
to  their  prayers,  and  draw  them  into  all  the  secret  help- 
ings of  God  in  a  state  of  reconciliation. 

All  which  he  is  said  to  do  "  with  groanings  which 
can  not  be  uttered  " — better  "  with  groanings  unuttered ;" 
that  is,  with  strivings  of  concern  or  burdened  feeling, 
that  are  the  silent  Gethsemane  of  his  ministry.  The 
groanings  of  Christ  are  audible  and  so  might  the  groan- 
ings of  the  Spirit  be,  if  he  had  the  vocal  organs  of  a 
body  connected  with  his  feeling.  Enough  that  one,  as 
truly  as  the  other,  and  both  in  exact  conformity,  fulfill 
the  natural  pathology  of  love  and  sacrifice;  Christ 
when  he  throws  himself  upon  the  ground,  groaning  aloud 
for  the  mere  burden  he  has  upon  his  feeling,  and  with- 
out any  other  kind  of  distress ;  and  the  Spirit  when  he 
enters  into  the  struggles  of  our  disorder  and  weakness 
with  so  great  concern,  groaning  inaudibly  in  us  and 
heaving  out  our  soul  in  sighs  and  prayers. 

It  is  no  small  confirmation  of  the  view  thus  given, 
that  when  it  is  carried  forward  into  the  latter  of  the  two 
verses,  all  that  awkwardness  which  the  commentators 
appear  to  have  felt,  in  assigning  to  it  any  precise  mean- 
ing, is  completely  removed.  Omitting  the  words  "will 
of"  which  are  not  in  the  original,  we  read — "And  he  that 
[sought  unto  by  prayer]  searcheth  the  hearts,  knoweth 
what  is  the  mind  of  the  Spirit  [the  mind  which  the 
Spirit  is  working  in  us]  because  he  [the  Spirit]  maketh 


84  THE    HOLY    SPIRIT  PART  I. 

intercession  for  the  saints  [preparing  a  mind  in  them] 
according  to  God  " — working  that  is  from  and  toward 
just  that  counsel  of  vicarious  love  which  has  dwelt  in 
the  Godhead  from  eternity.  God  he  infers — this  is  the 
strain  of  his  argument — must  certainly  be  in  the  secret 
of  what  proceeds  from  himself,  and  when  fallen  souls 
are  wrought  into  that  same  mind  by  the  Spirit,  their 
prayers  must  be  accepted  and  their  footing  of  recon- 
ciliation established.  In  this  manner  do  the  Scriptures 
represent  the  Holy  Spirit,  in  his  vicarious  work  and 
office  of  intercession — bathing  us  inwardly  in  all  Christ- 
ly  sympathy,  bearing  our  burdens  of  weakness,  and 
sinr  and  groaning,  as  it  were,  his  own  longings  for  us 
into  our  prayers.  At  the  same  time  it  is  to  be  admitted 
that  there  is  a  good  deal  of  language  applied  to  Christ 
and  his  work  in  the  Scriptures  which  is  not  applied  to 
the  Holy  Spirit ;  which  also  it  is  no  part  of  my  present 
subject  to  explain.  I  only  say  that  it  contemplates  a 
difference  in  the  offices  of  Christ  and  the  Spirit,  and 
their  modes  and  kinds  of  operation.  My  present  con- 
cern is  simply  to  show  that  the  Holy  Spirit  works  in 
the  same  feeling  as  Christ  did,  bears  the  same  burdens 
on  his  love,  suffers  the  same  wounded  sensibility,  en- 
counters loss  and  sacrifice  under  the  same  vicarious  im- 
pulse. I  do  not  undertake  to  identify  Christ  and  the 
Spirit  in  such  a  sense  as  to  make  them  do  the  same 
things,  or  work  by  the  same  method.  One  operates 
outwardly,  the  other  inwardly ;  one  before  the  under- 
standing, the  other  in  it ;  one  making  impressions  by 
what  is  acted  before  the  senses  and  addressed  to  thought, 


CHAP.  III.          IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  85 

the  other  by  groanings  and  throbs  of  divine  feeling 
back  of  thought.  This  much,  however,  I  will  say,  that 
if  the  sacrifices  of  the  much  enduring,  agonizing  spirit, 
were  acted  before  the  senses,  in  the  manner  of  the  in- 
carnate life  of  Jesus,  he  would  seem  to  make  the  world 
itself  a  kind  of  Calvary  from  age  to  age,  and  would 
just  as  impressively  sanctify  the  law,  by  the  perennial 
obedience  of  his  sacrifices,  as  Christ  did  by  the  casual 
sacrifice  of  his  cross.  And  this  brings  me  to  add — 

4.  That  the  reason  why  the  Holy  Spirit  is  regarded 
so  much  less  tenderly  by  us  than  Christ,  or  even  as 
having  no  particular  title  to  our  love,  is  Onl  doefi  not 
that  we  are  creatures  in  the  senses,  car-  meet  us  in  the 
nalized  also  and  blinded,  as  regards  all  s 
spiritual  perceptions,  by  the  sensuous  habit  of  our  sin, 
and  that  Christ  meeting  us  in  the  senses,  speaking  to  us 
with  a  man's  voice,  enduring  toil  and  contempt  for  us, 
joining  himself  to  us  in  all  our  external  adversities,  look- 
ing on  us  with  a  face  gloomed  by  sorrow,  or  bathed 
in  the  sweat  of  agony,  or  stained  by  the  blood  of  his 
thorny  crown  and  cross — meeting  us  in  this  way,  hav- 
ing a  human  person  for  his  organ,  Christ  lays  hold  of  our 
feeling,  by  his  address  to  the  senses,  and  we  begin  to 
imagine  some  special  tenderness  and  fellow  sensibility 
in  him,  awakened  by  his  human  relationship  itself,  and 
dating  after  that  relationship  begun.  Whereas  he  has 
only  come  into  humanity  because  the  feeling  was  in 
him  before,  and  has  taken  up  the  human  nature,  that  he 
might  have  an  organ  of  what  before  was  hid,  unex- 
pressed, in  his  divine  feeling.  And  so  the  Holy  Spirit, 

8 


86  THE    HOLY    SPIRIT  PART  I. 

coming  after,  comes  in  that  same  feeling,  tempered  to 
just  the  same  pitch  of  vicarious  sacrifice  for  men.  Jesus 
is  not  better  than  the  Father,  nor  better  than  the  Spirit, 
his  substitute.  We  think  so,  if  at  all,  only  because  we 
see  him  with  our  eyes ;  and  he  is  put  before  our  eyes, 
in  the  flesh,  for  the  very  purpose  of  expressing  to  us 
adequately  what  is  in  the  Everlasting  Godhead,  unvoiced 
to  feeling  in  us  hitherto,  unexpressed  by  look,  or  form, 
or  act,  or  agony.  Could  we  make  the  still  small  voice 
of  the  Spirit  audible,  could  we  bring  into  sound  the 
groanings  unuttered,  could  we  invest  the  Spirit  in  our 
hearts  with  a  look  that  is  the  fit  expression  of  his  sensi- 
bility, and  feel  the  tears  of  his  divine  pity  dropping  on 
the  face  of  our  sin,  how  evident  would  it  be  made  to  us, 
that  we  have,  in  him,  the  true  Christ-passion,  living 
always  in  the  secret  center  of  our  life  ;  the  very  same 
that  we  had  visibly  before  us,  in  the  tender  ministries 
and  suffering  graces  of  the  Son  of  Mary. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  necessary  to  add,  that  the  Holy 
Spirit  in  such  a  ministry  of  sacrifice  and  burdened  feel- 
Works  in  author-  ing,  holds  the  magisterial  key  of  divin- 
ity also.         jtv  stj]^  an(j  makes  it  none  the  less  a 

piercing  and  strong  ministry.  He  is  just  like  Christ  in 
this  respect.  The  tenderness  and  self-sacrificing  love  of 
Christ  never  subsided  into  softness,  or  a  look  of  weak- 
ness. Authority  goes  with  him.  He  lays  himself  upon 
the  proud,  the  plunderers  of  the  poor,  the  pretenders 
and  hypocrites  in  religion,  in  words  of  fearful  severity. 
He  is  kingly  even  in  his  passion.  And  in  just  the 
same  manner  the  Spirit  has  thunders  for  guilty  con- 


CHAP.  III.          IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  87 

sciences,  none  the  less  terrible,  that,  like  his  groanings, 
they  are  inaudible ;  scourges  of  rods  to  lay  upon  the 
backs  of  all  defiant  sins ;  fiery -pointed  arrows  of  con- 
viction to  hurl  among  the  drowsy  fears,  and  awake 
them  out  of  their  sleep.  He  sharpens  the  soul's  hunger, 
stirs  it  up  to  self-disgust,  kindles  aspiration,  strikes  the 
bell  of  time  and  makes  it  ring  the  note  of  flying  years. 
A  faithful  and  strong  Spirit,  he  can  also  be  a  piercing 
and  severe  Spirit.  The  vicarious  love  makes  him  none 
the  less  a  king,  and  the  kingdom  of  God  he  establishes 
within  none  the  less  truly  a  kingdom.  In  a  word,  he 
bears  the  whole  divine  character  into  his  ministry; 
and  brings  it  in  upon  our  hearts'  presence  as  a  revela- 
tion there  of  God's  full  majesty.  Adding  this  for  safe- 
guard, our  conclusion  is  that  the  ministry  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  is  as  truly  a  ministry  of  suffering  and  vicarious 
sacrifice  as  that  of  Christ  himself. 

I  can  not  drop  the  subject  in  hand  without  adverting 
to  a  great  and  very  hurtful  misconception  of  the  Gospel 
plan  itself,  that  connects  with  this  same  misconception 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  which  I  am  here  trying  to  correct. 
Thus  how  very  commonly  is  it  given  as  a  true  summation 
of  the  Gospel,  that  Christ,  by  his  death  and  A  mechanical 
sacrifice,  prepares  a  ground  of  forgiveness  Gospel  which  is 
or  justification,  and  then  that  the  Holy 
Spirit  is  sent  by  a  kind  of  immediate,  or  efficient 
agency,  to  renew  the  soul  in  a  forgivable  state.  Christ 
works  before  the  law,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  works  in  the 
soul ;  one  to  open  a  gate  of  mercy,  the  other  to  lead  into 
that  gate.  As  if  Christ,  in  his  agony,  and  cross,  and 


88  THE    HOLY    SPIRIT  PART  I. 

all  the  feeling  of  his  most  feeling  and  beautiful  ministry, 
were  not  engaged  to  be  a  reconciling  power  in  souls,  at 
all,  but  only  to  set  himself  before  God's  justice,  and  his 
just  retributions,  buying  their  silence  by  his  pains; 
whereupon  the  Holy  Spirit,  a  very  good  being  doubt- 
less, though  doing  nothing  specially  here  by  goodness,  is 
sent  forth,  in  adequate  force,  to  be  the  great  Kegenerator. 
The  regeneration  accordingly  is  not  a  point  won  by 
any  Gospel  siege  of  love  and  sacrifice,  but  carried  by 
mighty  impressment  rather,  much  as  if  by  some  unseen 
hydrostatic  pressure,  or  some  silent  gun-shot  stroke  of 
omnipotence.  These  sapless  timbers  1  these  fleshless, 
nerveless  bones !  how  sad  a  figure  do  they  make  of  the 
Gospel,  where  the  true  Christ  and  Spirit  come  together, 
in  love  and  sacrifice,  to  beget  us  in  holiness,  by  the 
longings  felt  of  their  joint  passion  in  our  hearts. 

It  results,  of  course,  under  such  a  conception  of  the 
Gospel  plan,  that  we  are  drawn  to  no  very  close  per- 
sonal union  either  with  Christ,  or  the  Spirit,  and  just 
that  is  missed  which,  in  God's  view,  is  the  principal 
aim  of  all ;  viz.,  the  power  to  be  exerted  in  us  by  the 
feeling  expressed  to  us.  For  if  Christ,  in  what  is  called 
his  vicarious  sacrifice,  is  wholly  withdrawn  from  us, 
and  is  only  doing  a  work  before  justice  and  the  law,  in 
some  court  of  reckoning  we  know  not  where,  he  is 
plainly  doing  nothing  to  win  a  place  in  our  conscious- 
ness, or  to  produce  a  Christly  consciousness  in  us. 
He  does  not  move  upon  us,  but  upon  the  books,  think- 
ing only  of  the  credit  to  be  gained  for  us  there  by  the 
contribution  of  his  pains.  How  then  is  he  going  to  be 


CHAP.  III.          IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  89 

formed  in  us  ?  And  by  what  conceivable  method  are 
we  to  have  him  inwardly  revealed,  and  to  say,  as  the 
conscious  witness  of  our  hearts,  Christ  liveth  in  us? 
However  good  and  great  the  work  he  is  doing  among 
the  retributive  economies  for  us,  he  is  not  here  for  the 
doing  specially  of  any  thing  in  us. 

Meantime  the  Spirit  is  reduced  to  an  attitude  where 
we  are  unlikely  as  may  be,  to  conceive  any  such  thing 
as  the  greatness  and  blessedness  of  a  con-  The  Spirit  our 
scious,  everlastingly  established  friendship  invisible  friend- 
with  him.  He  is  not  here,  to  reach  us,  in  any  sense,  by 
the  divine  feeling.  He  is  not  Christ  taken  out  of  form 
and  locality,  to  be  present  everywhere  and  be  revealed, 
unseen,  as  a  Christ  living  in  all  hearts.  But  he  is 
thought  of  more  as  an  efficient  divine  operator  in  souls; 
doing  a  work  of  repair  in  them,  or,  at  most,  a  work  of 
moral  suasion  before  their  choices ;  neither  of  which  is 
very  much  related  to  our  personal  sentiments  and  the 
engagement  of  our  love  to  his  character.  We  think  of 
him  as  of  some  impersonal  force,  some  hidden  fire,  some 
holy  gale,  not  as  a  friend  present  in  sympathy,  or 
wounded  feeling,  to  every  throb  of  our  hearts ;  disgusted 
by  sensuality  and  passion,  pained  by  vanity,  offended  by 
pride,  grieved  by  neglect,  hurt  by  unbelief  and  all 
worldly  inclinings ;  our  eternal  counselor,  guide,  helper, 
stay  ;  such  a  Spirit  as,  living  in  us,  keeps  the  sensibili- 
ties even  of  Gethsemane  and  the  passion  in  immediate 
contact  with  our  inmost  life.  How  great  value  and 
power  there  might  be  in  such  a  conception  is  obvious. 
What  mindfulness,  what  delicate  reverences  and  exact 

8* 


90  THE    HOLY    SPIRIT,    ETC.  PAKT  L 

loyalty  of  living  would  it  require,  and  how  dear  the 
confidence  it  would  support.  Whether  it  be  a  relation 
more  fearful  or  tender,  more  humble  or  lofty,  more 
careful  or  inspiring,  I  hardly  know ;  it  is  every  thing 
great,  beautiful,  tender,  holy,  powerful.  Losing  the 
sense  of  such  a  Spirit  and  of  such  a  personal  friendship 
with  him,  we  seem  to  lose  every  thing.  He  is  our 
other  Comforter,  our  second  Christ ;  and  when  we  lose 
our  faith  in  him,  or  hold  him  but  dimly,  we  are  just  so 
far  reduced  to  an  experience  that  is  orphanage — even  as 
Christ  himself  conceived  when  he  said,  "I  will  not 
leave  you  orphans,  I  will  come  to  you." 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  GOOD  ANGELS  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE. 

IT  has  been  a  great  hindrance,  we  have  seen,  to  all 
right  conceptions  of  what  is  called  the  vicarious  sacri- 
fice of  Jesus  Christ,  that  the  attempt  has  been  kept  up, 
so  persistently,  to  solve  it  as  a  matter  one  side  of  all 
the  common  principles  of  duty — a  superlative  good- 
ness, too  good  to  be  obligatory  on  Christ,  or  any  one 
else ;  an  optional  sacrifice,  when  undertaken  by  him, 
that  overtops  all  requirement  and  makes  a  virtue  better 
than  even  perfect  law  can  frame  a  notion  of.  And  so, 
by  a  kind  of  prodigious  goodness  above  his  obligation, 
Christ  raises  a  fund  of  surplus  merit,  to  even  the  account 
of  all  the  world's  wrong  doing  under  obligation.  There 
ought  to  be  some  difficulty  in  getting  well  through  any 
such  kind  of  solution ;  for  after  all  the  principles  of 
duty,  or  virtue,  have  been  thrown  into  confusion, 
no  rule  is  left  to  work  by,  in  the  settlement  of  any 
thing. 

In  this  view,  or  on  this  account,  I  have  undertaken 
to  show  the  universality  of  just  what  we  discover  most 
distinctly  in  the  work  and  sacrifice  of  Christ ;  that  every 
good  being,  just  according  to  his  degree  in  good,  will 
bear  evil  beings  and  suffer  in  feeling  for  them  and  take, 


92  THE    GOOD    ANGELS  PART  I. 

as  it  were,  their  bad  lot  on  himself;  that,  as  Christ  did 
it,  so  did  the  Father  before  Christ  in  the  dispensation  of 
the  Old  Testament;  also  that  the  Holy  Spirit,  after 
Christ,  is  continually  doing  it,  in  his  continued  work  of 
intercession.  Vicarious  action,  feeling,  suffering,  there- 
fore, is  not  peculiar  to  the  Son,  but  is  even  from  eter- 
nity in  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  and  in  one  as 
truly  as  in  the  others. 

What  I  now  propose  is  to  carry  the  same  conclusion 
a  degree  farther,  or  to  bring  it  a  step  nearer  down  to 

All   good   Intel-    US '    viz<>   tO  sllOW   that   a11   h°lv   beings 

ligences  in  vicari-  created  are  in  exactly  the  same  vicari- 
ous spirit  and  suffering  way  of  love  as 
Christ  was,  only  not  doing  and  suffering  exactly  the 
same  things.  This  may  seem,  in  one  view,  to  signify 
little  as  regards  the  extension  of  my  subject ;  for  if  the 
uncreated  three  are  in  the  very  same  love  as  Christ 
from  eternity,  bearing  for  love's  sake  all  the  burdens  of 
all  enemies,  and  suffering  a  Gethsemane  in  feeling  on 
their  account,  it  of  course  adds  nothing  as  regards  au- 
thority, to  show,  that  all  created  subjects,  the  glorified 
men,  the  angels  and  seraphim  of  the  heavenly  worlds, 
are  also  in  the  same.  But  we  are  looking,  it  must  be 
observed,  not  after  authority,  but  after  commonness,  or 
a  common  platform  of  principles  in  vicarious  sacrifice ; 
and  therefore  it  signifies  even  the  more  to  find  all  the 
holy  intelligences  of  God's  empire  in  it,  with  Him,  and 
with  Christ;  for  it  brings  the  Christly  sacrifice  down 
just  so  much  closer  to  our  human  ranges  of  life  and 
character,  and  our  common  obligations  of  duty  and  sac- 


CHAP.  IV.          IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  93 

rifice.  It  shows,  in  fact,  that  Christ's  vicarious  action  is 
no  prodigious  matter,  no  monstrosity  of  goodness,  but 
that  all  created  holy  beings  have  their  perfection  and 
blessedness  in  the  same. 

On  this  point  we  have  several  distinct  modes  of  evi- 
dence. 

1.  A  negative  evidence,  created  by  the  impossibility 
of  assuming  the  contrary.     Nothing  would  more  cer- 
tainly shock  our  conceptions  of  glorified    Shocking  to  think 
minds,  or  of  what  is  proper  to  their  holy         otherwise, 
character,  than  to  hear  it  affirmed  that  they  are  igno- 
rant of  sacrifice,  never  afflicted  for  the  want,  or  woe,  or 
fall  of  others ;  that,  in  fact,  they  would  never  think  of 
being  burdened  with  concern  for  an  enemy,  or  of  bear- 
ing any  loss  or  sacrifice  for  his  sake.     Is  that  the  kind 
of  virtue,  or  character,  that  distinguishes  the  glorified 
state?      Is  it  by  such  minds,  in  such  a  spirit,  that 
Christ  is  to  be  appreciated,  and  is  it  such  that  are  to 
have  their  joy  in  society  with  him  ? 

2.  It  is  agreed  that  angels  and  all  glorified  minds  are 
in  the  principle  and  life  of  love ;  and  love  in  angels 
works  according  to  its  own  nature,  as      Their  love 
truly  as  it  does  in  God  or  in  Christ ;  for  them  in  a  way  of 
it  is  a  power  universally  that  takes  hold 

of  its  objects  and  of  all  their  woes,  wants,  wrongs  and 
even  enmities,  to  bear  them  as  a  weight  on  its  afflicted  t 
sympathies.     As  certainly,  therefore,  as  the  angels  and 
good  minds  of  the  upper  world  are  fixed  in  the  sway 
of  love,  they  will  run  out  their  sympathies  to  others 


91  THE    GOOD    ANGELS  PART  I. 

and  will  burden  their  hearts  with  concern  for  the  un- 
worthy and  the  wicked ;  ministering  unseen,  where  they 
may,  in  warnings  and  secret  guidances.  If  they  are  in 
Christ's  love,  they  will  have  a  Gethsemane  and  a  cross 
in  that  love,  and  will  be  fulfilling  their  unseen  ministry 
in  the  same  key  with  his. 

3.  It  signifies  much  that  they  are  drawn  to  Christ 
with  such  evident  sympathy,  and  are  with  him  so  con- 

Their  sympathy    Stantlv'    at    6VerV    Stag6'    and    in    eV617 

with  Christ  shows  principal  crisis  of  his  work.  The  inter- 
est they  have  in  him  is  visibly  toned 
and  tempered,  by  their  common  interest  with  him  in  his 
objects.  Ages  before  his  coming,  they  are  moved  with 
mighty  expectation,  "  desiring  to  look  into  these  things." 
u  Highly  favored !  blessed  among  women !"  is  the  eager 
and  strongly  reverent  salutation  they  bring  to  Mary's 
mortal  womanhood.  When  the  child  is  born,  they 
break  into  the  sky,  filling  it  full  of  heavenly  hymn — 
"  Glory  to  God  in  the  highest,  on  earth  peace."  In  his 
temptation,  they  crowd  about  him  to  support  him  by 
their  ministry.  In  his  agony,  one  comes  to  strengthen 
him.  In  his  trial,  he  is  sure  that  he  can  have  twelve 
legions  to  help  him.  They  watch  by  the  tomb  where 
he  sleeps ;  they  roll  away  the  stone  when  he  wakes ;  and 
sitting  there,  one  at  the  head  and  another  at  the  feet,  in 
forms  more  glorious  than  sculptured  stones,  they  mark 
the  now  vacant  place  of  his  rest.  With  a  delicate  rev- 
erence, they  tenderly  fold  the  bloody  napkin  up  and 
the  bloody  linen  clothes,  and  lay  them  apart  by  them- 
selves; and  they  say  to  Mary,  with  what  tenderness, 


CHAP.  IV.        IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  95 

and,  as  it  were  tearful  homage,  "Come  see  the  place 
where  the  Lord  lay."  Almost,  of  course,  they  are  with 
him  in  his  ascension,  when  his  work  of  sacrifice  is  done ; 
and  he  goes  up  in  the  train  of  their  innumerable  com- 
pany. 

All  these,  now,  as  I  readily  admit,  are  rather  indica- 
tions than  positive  proofs.  And  yet  there  is  such  a 
zeal  in  their  sympathy  as  indicates  no  partial  accord,  but 
a  thoroughly  complete  oneness  with  him.  Appearing 
most  punctually  when  he  sinks  lowest  in  sacrifice,  flock- 
ing to  him  in  his  agony  and  always  when  his  soul  is 
troubled,  what  can  we  imagine  but  that  they  suffer  with 
him  ;  pained  for  his  enemies  even  as  he  is,  and  bearing 
the  same  burdens  for  them  ?  Otherwise  their  sympathy 
itself  could  be  scarcely  better  than  an  offense  to  his 
feeling.  But  there  is  a  more  direct  kind  of  evidence — 

4.  In  the  ministry  they  maintain  themselves;  for 
they  have  a  ministry,  side  by  side  with  that  of  Jesus, 
in  which  we  may  see  distinctly  what  Their  ministry  is 
and  how  much  of  sacrifice  they  are  able  in  Christ's  way  of 
to  bear,  and  do  in  fact  bear,  for  man-  f 
kind.  I  am  well  aware  of  the  general  unbelief  or  prac- 
tical Sadduceeism,  as  regards  "angel  and  spirit,"  that  is 
likely  to  impose  a  look  of  myth  or  hollow  fantasy,  on 
any  thing  which  can  be  said  of  the  angelic  ministries 
of  the  Scripture.  Any  appeal  made  to  them  in  a  mat- 
ter of  argument  is  likely  to  bear  a  specially  unsolid,  or 
even  flighty  and  visionary  character,  in  the  estimation 
tion  of  such  as  mean  to  believe  in  them,  and  would  even 
be  offended  by  the  intimation  that  they  really  do  not. 


96  THE    GOOD    ANGELS  PART  I. 

I  can  not  stop  to  argue  the  question  of  such  ministries. 
I  will  only  suggest  that  I  am  discussing  a  purely  Script- 
ural matter,  on  grounds  of  Scripture  evidence,  and  that 
such  ministries  are  not  heartily  believed,  probably  be- 
cause the  supposed  visitants  are  taken  to  be  only  phan- 
tasms, or  apparitions,  and  not  real  beings.  For  if  there  be 
any  thing  in  our  doctrine  of  immortality,  there  ought  to 
be  a  world  of  real  intelligences  and  glorified  minds  out- 
side of  this ;  beings  that  have  a  character,  as  truly  as  we 
ourselves  expect  to  have,  and  that,  having  a  character, 
will  have  sympathies  and  a  disposition  to  be  occupied 
in  good  works ;  beings,  many  of  them,  who  have  gone 
out  from  our  own  human  society,  and  are  bound  to  it 
by  the  dearest  affinities  of  love  and  customary  friend- 
ship, and  will  want  to  be  engaged,  if  possible,  in  minis- 
tries of  good  to  others  left  behind.  Let  it  also  be  noted, 
that  they  are  represented  as  ministering  only  to  the 
heirs  of  salvation ;  that  is  to  such  as  are  fenced  away 
from  their  invisible  access  by  no  contrary  affinities ;  for 
it  may  be  that  all  good  minds  have  immediate  access  to 
such  as  are  good,  and  that  no  conditions  of  sense,  or 
walls  of  distance,  ever  shut  apart,  or  in  the  nature  of 
things  can,  such  as,  in  God's  love,  are  made  inherently 
common  to  each  other.  Besides,  how  completely  will 
it  take  away  the  fantastic  look  of  these  celestial  breth- 
ren and  their  visitations,  just  to  conceive  them  as  com- 
ing into  the  world,  because  they  are  pressed  by  the  same 
love  as  Christ  was,  and  drawn,  by  the  sublime  necessity  of 
their  own  perfect  character,  to  bear  our  lot  of  shame  and 
loss,  in  a  similar  extension  of  their  suffering  sympathy. 


CHAP.  IV.          IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  97 

This  now  we  shall  find  is  the  exact  conception  held 
of  them  at  all  points  in  the  representations  of  Scripture. 
Some  of  them  we  are  expressly  taught. 

J  The  Scripture 

and  we  know  not  how  many,  are  men,  or  shows  them  as 
the  spirits  of  men,  once  living  on  earth ;  m  8acnficc- 
just  as  soundly  real  as  they  ever  were,  or  as  we  our- 
selves are  to  day.  And  what  is  more  they  are  only 
acting  in  character,  precisely  the  same  kind  of  charac- 
ter which  they  lived  in  as  members  of  our  race.  They 
were  men  who  bore  great  burdens  of  toil  and  suffering 
for  the  people  of  their  times,  and  only  learned  to  bear 
them  in  that  manner  for  the  people  of  all  times.  They 
found  a  cross  in  their  virtue  itself,  even  as  Christ  did, 
and  all  that  we  discover,  in  their  ministries  among  us 
now,  is  that  they  have  not  forgotten  their  cross,  or 
grown  tired  of  it. 

Thus  we  are  expressly  informed  that  the  angels  of 
the  transfiguration  are  Moses  and  Elias ;  and  they  spake 
with  him,  most  naturally,  of  his  decease  which  he  should 
accomplish  at  Jerusalem.  By  which  we  are  to  under- 
stand, not  that  they  informed  him  of  his  crucifixion,  for 
that  he  knew  already,  but  they  joined  their  feeling  to 
his,  and  comforted  him  by  their  suffering  sympathy,  and 
the  assured  sympathy  of  the  heavenly  worlds.  For 
which,  too,  they  had  been  effectually  trained  by  their 
own  former  trials  and  burdens  of  love  on  earth  ;  Moses 
when  he  cried,  sinking  under  such  burdens,  "  I  can  not 
bear  this  people,"  and  Elias  when  he  groaned  under- 
ground in  his  cave,  "  I  have  been  very  jealous  for  the 
Lord  of  Hosts."  And  who  was  that  angel  in  John's 

9 


98  THE    GOOD    ANGELS  PART  I. 

vision  who  said,  "  I  am  of  thy  brethren  the  prophets  ?" 
Was  it  Daniel  who  fasted  in  such  'broken  plaints 
of  sorrow  for  his  people  and  country?  or  was  it 
Jeremiah  who  cried,  "  0  that  my  head  were  waters  and 
mine  eyes  a  fountain  of  tears  ?"  All  these,  and  other 
such  holy  men  of  old,  had  borne  the  cross  of  love  in 
their  time,  and  have  not  forgotten  it,  now  that  they  are 
classed  as  angels.  The  ministries  they  fulfill  are  only 
their  old  ministries  enlarged  and  made  perfect.  They 
lived  in  vicarious  sacrifice  before  they  went  up,  and 
the  tragic  joy  they  had  in  it  draws  them  to  it  now. 

Meantime  we  shall  find  that,  in  all  which  is  told  us 
of  these  angelic  ministries,  they  are  set  in  close  analogy 
with  the  ministry  of  Christ  himself.  They  are  with 
Hagar  by  the  fountain  of  the  wilderness,  as  Christ  with 
the  woman  at  Jacob's  well.  They  are  with  Elijah  the 
starving  prophet  in  his  sleep  under  the  juniper  tree,  offer- 
ing him  their  cake  which  they  have  baked  upon  the  coals, 
even  as  Christ  prepared  his  fire  of  coals,  and  the  fish 
and  the  bread,  that  his  hungry  friends,  on  landing  from 
their  boats,  might  receive  the  token  of  his  divine  hospital- 
ity. They  had  such  a  feeling  of  tender  sympathy  for 
innocent  children,  coming  forth  into  a  rough  world  of  sin 
and  sorrow,  that  they  took  hold,  every  one,  of  some  one 
child,  or  more  than  one,  to  become  their  unseen  guar- 
dians— "Verily  I  say  unto  you  their  angels  do  always 
behold  the  face  of  my  father " — even  as  the  incarnate 
Lord  himself  clave  to  the  children  everywhere,  and 
laid  his  hands  and  his  dear  blessing  on  them,  saying — 
•"  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  Heaven." 


''  : '  ,-c 

s 

Onxp.IV.          IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE. 


». 


How  deeply  their  feeling  is  entered  into  the  great 
tragedy  of  sin,  and  all  the  lost  conditions  of  the  fallen 
state  under  sin,  we  may  see,  on  a  large  concerned  for 
scale,  when  they  are  shown,  before  the  sin  as  God  is. 
great  salvation  promised  has  arrived  ;  "  desiring  to  look 
into  these  things,"  and  breaking  out  afterwards  when  it 
is  complete — ten  thousand  times  ten  thousand  and  thou- 
sands of  thousands — in  the  song  of  their  own  deep, 
always  suffering  love,  "  Worthy  is  the  Lamb  that  was 
slain."  Also  in  what  Christ  says  himself,  testifying — 
"  Verily  I  say  unto  J-ou  there  is  joy  in  the  presence  of 
the  angels  of  God  over  one  sinner  that  repenteth." 
Which  joy  he  still  further  explains  by  showing  how  it 
springs  up  with  his  own,  growing  on  the  same  root  of 
care,  concern  and  suffering  sympathy ;  how  they  rejoice 
with  him,  because,  with  him,  they  are  looking  always 
after  lost  men,  even  as  a  shepherd  after  his  one  lost 
sheep,  or  a  housekeeper  looking  after  her  one  lost  piece  of 
money ;  and  therefore,  he  and  they  together,  when  they 
have  found  their  lost  one,  have  their  burden  of  sorrow, 
as  he  represents,  fall  off,  in  a  blessed  and  rebounding 

joy- 
it  is  worthy,  too,  of  special  remark  that  Christ  con- 
ceives them  coming  to  men,  in  a  ministry  to  the  body 
strikingly  correspondent  with  his  own —      concerned  for 
restrained  by  no  fastidious  disgusts,  avert-  the  sick  and  poor 
ed  by  no  disrespect  of  the  humble  and  de-  "  Christ  was' 
jected  lot  of  the  poor.     They  do  not  spurn,  they  can 
not  even  neglect,  the  dying  beggar  at  the  rich  man's 
gate.     No  matter  whether  it  be  a  story  of  fact,  or  only 


100  THE    GOOD    ANGELS  PART  I. 

a  parable,  the  figure  they  make  will  be  in  charac- 
ter, in  one  as  truly  as  in  the  other,  and  the  picture  he 
gives  will,  in  either  case,  reveal  them  in  a  manner 
worthy  of  our  study.  The  beggar  is  in  a  most  sorry 
plight.  He  wants  a  nurse,  a  physician,  and  friends, 
and  withal,  a  place  in  which  to  die.  But  of  all  his 
kinsmen,  if  he  has  any,  there  is  none  that  will  be 
charged  with  a  care  so  unwelcome  and  loathsome.  He 
goes  a  begging  thus  at  the  street  corners  and  elsewhere, 
till  finally  having  reached  the  shelter  of  a  rich  man's 
gateway,  or  the  arched  corridor  of  stone  leading  into 
the  court  of  his  house,  his  round  is  ended,  and  he  lies 
down  there,  till  the  round  of  life  also  may  be  finished. 
He  asks  the  pity  of  a  few  crumbs  for  his  famishing 
body.  Perhaps  he  gets  them,  and  perhaps  he  does  not. 
This  at  least  he  does  not  get ;  viz.,  that  tender  human 
sympathy  which  every  humblest  creature  wants  in  his 
last  hours. 

Thus  he  fared  with  men ;  but  there  were  two  classes  of 
beings,  in  a  different  key,  who  came  to  his  help  in  their 
wonted  acts  of  ministry — the  dogs,  I  mean,  and  the 
angels — the  dogs  from  below,  esteeming  him  to  be  an- 
other and  superior  kind  of  creature;  the  angels  from 
above,  rating  his  significance  and  dignity  as  much 
higher,  as  their  mind  was  capable  of  higher  thoughts. 
Behold  them  here  at  hand,  the  dogs  and  the  angels  to- 
gether, in  a  strange  companionship  of  ministry,  round 
the  flinty  bed  of  the  poor  abject  and  son  of  sorrow ; 
they  dispensing  their  low  natural  surgery  on  his  ulcer- 
ated body,  and  these,  beholding  in  him  an  heir  of  glory 


CHAP.  IT.         jx    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  101 

and  a  future  peer  with  them  in  their  heavenly  dignities ; 
watching  by  him  as  volunteer  nurses,  strengthening 
him  inwardly  by  the  touch  of  their  own  brave  hearts, 
and  waiting,  as  the  pulse  beats  low  and  the  breath 
slackens  to  a  full  stop,  to  hail  him  as  a  brother  made 
free,  and  convoy  him  home.  Wonderful  picture  in  the 
light  and  shade  of  it,  signifying  much,  not  only  as  re- 
gards the  tender  fidelity  of  their  ministry  to  the  bodily 
condition  of  men,  but  a  great  deal  more  as  a  revelation 
of  the  fact,  that  they  are  able  to  encounter  so  much  nec- 
essary revulsion  of  feeling  and  really  painful  sympa- 
thy, in  doing  their  works  of  mercy.  No  one  looking 
on  the  picture  can  fail  to  be  struck  by  the  very  close 
analogy  between  their  way  and  that  of  Christ  himself. 
Neither  they  nor  he  can  perform  such  works  of  sympa- 
thy on  the  loathsome  subjects  of  bodily  disease,  with- 
out a  great  expenditure  of  suffering.  The  very  pity 
that  draws  them  to  such  works  is  itself  a  heavy  load  to 
bear,  and  is  just  as  much  heavier  as  their  love  is 
stronger,  their  sympathy  closer,  and  their  feeling  more 
delicate. 

See  how  it  was  with  Christ,  in  that  most  tender,  but 
strangely  compounded  and  really  fearful  scene,  the  rais- 
ing of  Lazarus.  Death,  who  took  him  on  his  way  four 
days  ago,  is  to  be  called  back  and  required  to  let  him 
forth  alive.  Jesus  struggles,  we  can  see,  with  great 
emotions,  partly  tender,  partly  painful.  He  weeps,  he 
groans  in  spirit,  and  is  troubled.  It  is  as  if  his  feeling 
were  in  contact  all  through  with  death's  foul  work,  as 
well  as  with  the  griefs  of  the  friends — glad,  for  the  disci- 

9* 


102  THE    GOOD    ANGELS  PART  I. 

pies'  sakes,  to  the  intent  they  may  believe,  and  yet 
scarcely  able  to  meet  the  ghastly  appearing  of  the  dead 
brother  whom  he  will  evoke  by  his  call.  Indeed,  if  we 
carefully  study  the  pathology  of  this  scene  we  shall  see 
the  feeling  of  Jesus  struggling  in  it,  with  surges  of  pain- 
ful commotion,  scarcely  less  proper  to  be  called  suffer- 
ing, than  the  agony  itself. 

So  when  the  angels  of  God  come  to  help  the  poor 
forlorn  beggar  off,  in  his  release  to  life.  That  fastidious 
feeling  which  might  torture  us,  in  coming  to  a  fellow 
mortal  in  such  loathsome  plight,  they  make  nothing  of; 
it  will  not  trouble  them,  for  they  suffer  no  false  disgusts. 
But  that  purity  which  has  put  them  so  far  aloof  from 
sin,  and  from  all  its  foul  incidents,  their  finer  tastes, 
their  more  delicate,  celestial  sensibilities — all  these  are 
yet  present  to  him,  body  and  soul,  not  without  pain, 
and  lifting,  as  it  were  in  sympathy  with  him,  to  bear  him 
out  of  his  foul  cave  and  start  him  on  his  flight.  So  the 
beggar  dies  and  is  carried  up,  escorted  home  to  Abra- 
ham's bosom,  as  the  Saviour  represents,  by  their  angelic 
company.  Christ  bore  him  in  his  passion,  and  they,  too, 
have  borne  him  in  their  passion,  now  no  longer  a  burden 
either  on  his  feeling  or  on  theirs.  I  will  only  add — 

5.  That  the  Scriptures  speak  of  these  angelic  minis- 
tries, in  terms  that  indicate  an  impression  of  sacrifice 
Conceived  in  the  m  them,  and  a  vicarious  engagement  of 
priestly  character,  fo^  suffering  love.  The  very  word 
minister — "  ministering  spirits  sent  forth  to  minister  " — 
has  a  Christly  meaning,  as  if  they  were  on  a  mission  of 
service,  and  sacrifice,  and  holy  pains-taking,  like  that 


CHAP.  IV.         IN    VICARIOUS    SACRIFICE.  103 

of  Christ  the  Lamb ;  enduring  contradiction,  wounded 
feeling,  heaviness  of  heart,  and  struggling  on,  through 
pains  of  love,  to  accomplish  their  charge  of  guardian- 
ship. They  are  also  spoken  of  in  terms  that  bear  a 
priestly  character  as  being  intercessors  for  men.  Such 
terms  are  figures,  of  course,  and  objective  representa- 
tions, even  as  they  are  when  applied  to  Christ  himself. 
Thus  we  find  that,  as  Christ  is  called  our  Advocate  with- 
the  Father,  a  priest  that  liveth  ever  to  make  interces- 
sion, so  Christ  testifies  concerning  these  angels  standing 
in  their  ministries — "  they  do  always  behold  the  face  of 
my  Father  which  is  in  heaven."  To  behold  the  face  of 
God,  in  this  manner,  is  to  have  a  priestly  access,  and 
be  able  to  maintain  a  priestly  intercession,  even  as  the 
high  priest  enters  the  holy  of  holies,  to  make  answer 
and  suit  for  the  people.  So  when  Christ  declares — 
"  there  is  joy  in  the  presence  of  the  angels  of  God  over 
one  sinner  that  repenteth,"  he  means  by  "  the  presence 
of  the  angels  of  God,"  the  presence  of  God  made  glori- 
ous by  the  priestly  retinue  of  his  angels,  and  these  elec- 
trified with  joy,  that  the  labor  of  their  heart  is  crowned, 
and  their  suit  of  reconciliation  is  triumphant. 

We  have  it  then  as  a  point  established  by  Scripture 
evidence,  that  the  glorified  spirits,  or  angels  of  God, 
being  in  the  love  of  God,  are  also  in  that  The  vicarions 
kind  of  sacrifice,  or  vicarious  engagement,  principle  to  be 
which  love,  in  its  own  nature,  supposes.  ; 
And  so  the  gulf  between  sacrifice  in  uncreated  and 
created  minds  is  effectually  bridged.  Make  as  much  as 


104:  THE    GOOD    ANGELS,    ETC.  PART  I. 

we  will,  or  possibly  can,  of  the  vicarious  sacrifice  of  Christ, 
and,  as  being  the  incarnate  presence  and  ministry  of  God 
himself,  too  much  can  not  be  made  of  it,  still  there  is 
no  superlative,  over-good,  kind  of  goodness  in  it.  Call- 
ing it  good  by  the  only  standard  of  goodness,  perceiv- 
ing distinctly  that  love,  in  any  and  every  moral  being, 
will  burden  itself  for  all  sin  and  suffering,  and  hasten,  by 
its  own  everlasting  impulse,  to  take  the  woes  of  others 
on  its  feeling,  we  at  once  have  Christ  made  intelligible 
and  yet  as  sublimely  preeminent,  as  the  stature  of  his 
person,  and  the  transcendent  power  of  his  divine  minis- 
try and  suffering  require  him  to  be.  What  we  call  his 
merit  will  not  be  diminished,  but  it  will  be  no  such  merit 
as  exceeds  the  standards  of  character.  It  will  not  be  a 
something  which  theology  has  found,  to  fill  out  a  theo- 
logic  and  contrived  exigency,  but  it  will  be  a  divine 
patience  and  sorrow,  revealing  God's  love  to  our  hearts ; 
a  grace,  because  it  is  the  grace  of  a  character ;  a  salva- 
tion, because  it  is  a  power  of  salvation. 


CHAPTER  V. 

ALL  SOULS  REDEEMED,  TO  BE  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE. 

IN  what  is  called  his  vicarious  sacrifice,  Christ,  as  we 
have  seen,  simply  fulfills  what  belongs  universally  to 
love  ;  doing  neither  more  nor  less  than  what  the  com- 
mon standard  of  holiness  and  right  requires.  And  then 
since  there  can  be  no  other '  standard,  and  no  perfect 
worl"d,  or  society  can  be  constituted  under  a  different, 
or  lower  kind  of  excellence,  it  follows  incontestably 
that  the  restoration  of  mankind,  as  a  fallen  race,  must 
restore  them  to  a  love  that  works  vicariously,  and  con- 
forms, in  all  respects,  to  the  work  and  passion  of  Christ 
himself.  Vicarious  sacrifice  then  will  not  be  a  point 
where  he  is  distinguished  from  his  followers,  but  the 
very  life  to  which  he  restores  them,  in  restoring  them  to 
God.  What  we  call  his  redemption  of  mankind  must 
bring  them  to  the  common  standard.  Executed  by  vi- 
carious sacrifice  in  himself,  it  must  also  be  issued  in 
vicarious  sacrifice  in  them. 

The  common  impression,  I  am  sorry  to  believe,  is 
different.  It  belongs,  indeed,  to  the  staple  matter  of  our 
theologic  teaching  on  this  subject,  that,  vicarious  sacrifice 
while  we  are  to  follow  Christ,  and  copy  belongs  to  men. 
him,  and  aspire  to  be  like  him,  we  are  never  to  presume, 
and  can  not  without  great  irreverence  imagine,  that  we 


106  ALL    SOULS    REDEEMED,  PART! 

are  to  have  any  part  with  him  in  his  vicarious  sacrifice. 
We  can  not  atone,  it  is  said,  or  offer  any  satisfaction  for 
the  sin  of  the  world ;  we  are  too  little,  and  low,  and 
deep  in  sin  ourselves,  and  nothing  but  a  being  infinitely 
great  and  perfect,  by  an  optional  suffering  that  exceeds 
all  terms  of  obligation  on  himself,  can  avail  to  smooth 
God's  indignations,  and  so  far  even  our  debt,  as  to  make 
forgiveness  possible.  Therefore  we  are  to  understand, 
as  a  first  principle  of  the  Christian  salvation,  that 
Christ,  in  the  matter  of  his  vicarious  sacrifice,  is  a 
being  by  himself  and  is  not  to  be  followed,  in  any 
sense,  by  us,  though  followed  carefully  in  every  thing 
else.  In  this  very  great  mistake  are  included  three  or 
four  subordinate  mistakes,  that  required  to  be  specially 
noted,  and  corrected  by  the  necessary  explanations. 

1.  That  Christ,  in  all  that  pertains  to  his  work  as  vi- 
carious,   acts    officially,    or    fulfills   an    atoning  office 
t   wholly  one  side  of  his  character  as  a 

Christ  atones  not  J 

by  office,  but  by  perfect  character.  He  does  not  execute 
what  belongs  to  the  simple  perfection  of 
his  love  as  a  character  fulfilling  standard  obligation, 
but  performs  a  volunteer  office  in  our  behalf,  over 
and  above  all  that  is  obligatory  on  his  own  account. 
And  so,  the  vicarious  sacrifice,  being  a  matter  pertain- 
ing wholly  to  his  office,  and  not  to  his  character,  we 
of  course  can  have  no  part  in  it,  because  we  have  no 
part  in  his  office,  and  can  have  as  little  in  the  official 
merit  by  which  God's  account  is  satisfied.  Now 
the  obvious  fact,  that  which  we  have  seen  developed  in 
the  careful  illustrations  of  the  previous  chapters,  is  that 


CHAP.  Y.  TO  BE   IN   VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE.  107 

vicarious  sacrifice  belongs  to  no  office,  or  undertaking 
outside  of  holy  character,  but  to  holy  character  itself. 
Such  is  love  that  it  must  insert  itself  into  the  conditions, 
burden  itself  with  the  wants,  and  woes,  and  losses,  and 
even  wrongs  of  others.  It  waits  for  no  atoning  office, 
or  any  other  kind  of  office.  It  undertakes  because  it  is 
love,  not  because  a  project  is  raised,  or  an  office  ap- 
pointed. It  goes  into  suffering  and  labor,  and  painful 
sympathy,  because  its  own  everlasting  instinct  runs  that 
way.  There  can  be  no  greater  mistake,  in  this  view, 
than  to  imagine  that  Christ  has  the  matter  of  vicarious 
sacrifice  wholly  to  himself,  because  he  suffers  officially, 
or  as  having  undertaken  it  for  his  office  to  supply  so 
much  suffering.  He  suffered  simply  what  was  inci- 
dental to  his  love,  and  the  works  to  which  love 
prompted,  just  as  any  missionary  suffers  what  belongs  to 
the  work  of  love  he  is  in.  It  was  vicarious  suffering 
in  no  way  peculiar  to  him,  save  in  degree. 

No  further  qualification  is  needed,  unless  it  be  to  say, 
that  effects  will  follow  his  vicarious  sacrifice,  that  can 
not  follow  such  kind  of  sacrifice  in  men. 

Sacrifice  in  us 

And  the  difference  will  be  so  great,  that  carries  humbler 
he  will  have  accomplished  all  that  can  be  c 
fitly  included  in  the  redemption  of  the  world,  while  the 
same  kind  of  sacrifice,  morally  speaking,  in  men,  will 
accomplish  only  some  very  inferior  and  partial  benefits. 
A  proportion  stated  between  the  incarnate  Son  of  God 
and  his  infinitely  perfect  beauty  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  very  limited  and  sadly  mixed  virtue  of  a  human 
person  on  the  other,  will  represent  as  accurately  as  may 


108  ALL    SOULS    REDEEMED,  PART  I. 

be  the  comparative  results  of  the  same  kind  of  sacri- 
fice in  both. 

2.  It  is  another  of  the  mistakes  referred  to  that,  when 
vicarious  sacrifice  is  restricted  wholly  to  Christ,  and  con- 
The  fellowship  sidered  wholly  bey  ond  the  pale  of  human 
of  his  sufferings,  virtue,  the  restriction  supposes  a  kind 
of  vicarious  intervention  for  sin  that  is  artificial,  and 
has  no  root  in  moral  obligation.  Either  exceeding  the 
law  of  love,  or  else  falling  short  of  it,  he  fulfills  a  kind 
of  substitution  that  we  can  not  share,  because  it  is  not 
in  the  range  of  our  possible  sentiment,  or  even  intelli- 
gence. There  is  no  koinonia  for  us,  no  "  fellowship  in 
his  sufferings,"  because  he  suffers  outside  of  all  known 
terms  of  moral  obligation.  Whereas  we  may  and 
must  have  fellowship,  and  be  conformable  even  unto  his 
death,  because  he  is  himself  conformed  in  it  to  the  one, 
universal,  common,  standard  of  love.  The  true  and 
simple  account  of  his  suffering  is,  that  he  had  such  a 
heart  as  would  not  suffer  him  to  be  turned  away  from 
us,  and  that  he  suffered  for  us  even  as  love  must  wil- 
lingly suffer  for  its  enemy.  The  beauty  and  power  of 
his  sacrifice  is,  that  he  suffers  morally  and  because  of 
his  simple  excellence,  and  not  to  fill  a  contrived  place 
in  a  scheme  of  legal  justification.  He  scarcely 
minds  how  much  he  suffers,  or  how,  if  only  he  can  do 
love's  work.  He  does  not  propose  to  be  over-good,  and 
to  suffer  optionally  a  certain  modicum  beyond  what 
perfect  excellence  requires,  that  it  may  go  to  men's  ac- 
count. He  undertakes  to  furnish  no  superlative  merit 
above  all  standard  obligation,  which,  for  just  that  reason, 


CHAP.  V.   TO   BE   IN   VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE.  109 

can  have  no  perceived  quality  of  merit.  He  is  only  just 
as  good  as  he  ought  to  be,  and  suffers  what  he  ought  to 
suffer,  and  has  no  thought  of  doing  an  artificial  some- 
what, in  a  scheme  of  artificial  compensations,  where  he 
can  be  actuated  by  no  assignable  motive  within  the  pos- 
sible range  of  moral  ideas.  How  far  off  do  we  place 
him,  how  poorly  conceive  him,  when  we  put  him  thus 
away,  and  compel  him  to  die  for  ends  contrived,  apart 
from  all  behests  of  character.  All  that  is  most  central 
in  his  mission — the  love  of  God  in  tears  and  deep  groan- 
ings — is  dried  away  and  lost  to  feeling,  in  the  sterile 
and  dry  figment  we  require  it  to  be,  as  a  mere  quantita- 
tive sufficiency  of  pain,  contributed  under  no  assignable 
principle,  and  having  no  moral  quality  whatever. 

3.  Another  mistake  that  follows,  when  vicarious  sac- 
rifice is  restricted  to  Christ  alone,  is  yet  more  lamenta- 
ble because  it  corrupts  the  idea  of  sac-  Theideaofchris. 
rifice  itself,  when  imposed  as  a  condition  tian  sacrifice  how 
of  human  discipleship.  We  insist,  corr"Ptcd- 
abundantly,  on  the  necessary  law  of  self-denial  and  self- 
sacrifice.  We  quote  the  Master's  words  requiring  us  to 
follow  him  and  bear  the  cross  with  him,  or  after  him. 
There  must  be  sacrifice  we  say,  every  Christian  comes 
into  a  life  of  sacrifice — only  not  into  vicarious  sacrifice ; 
that  belongs  to  Christ  alone,  suffering  no  participation 
of  mortals.  A  qualification,  or  salvo,  that  very  nearly 
unchristianizes  Christianity  itself.  What  is  the  sacrifice 
that  must  not  be  vicarious  sacrifice,  but  a  virtue  that 
has  even  lost  connection  with  Christian  ideas  ?  It  is 
mere  self-abnegation,  a  loss  made  for  the  simple  sake  of 

10 


110  ALL    SOULS    REDEEMED,  PART  I. 

losing,  and  'no  such  practical  loss  as  love  encounters,  in 
gaining  or  serving  an  enemy.  It  has  the  same  relation 
to  vicarious  sacrifice  that  penance  has  to  repentance. 
It  is  itself  a  kind  of  penance,  or  torment,  submitted  to 
by  the  will.  It  does  not  appear  to  be  even  suspected 
that  such  kind  of  sacrifice  is  a  mode  of  asceticism,  sub- 
stituted for  the  sacrifice  of  the  Gospel,  and  yet  it  can 
be  nothing  else,  for  the  simple  reason  that  it  is  required 
not  to  be  vicarious.  Sacrifice  out  of  love,  or  because  a 
full  heart  naturally  and  freely  takes  on  itself  the  bur- 
dens and  woes  of  others,  has  a  positive  character,  and  is 
itself  the  most  intensely  positive  exercise  that  can  be 
conceived.  •  The  other  kind  of  sacrifice,  that  which 
must  not  work  vicariously,  is  naked  self-suppression,  a 
merely  dry  and  negative  operation,  in  which  the  soul 
willfully  chokes  itself  and  gets  no  return,  but  a  sense  of 
being  famished  for  its  pains.  And  how  much  of  what 
is  so  persistently  taught  concerning  self-denial,  sacrifice, 
taking  up  the  cross,  is,  in  just  this  manner,  a  departure 
from  all  Christian  ideas;  a  wearisome,  unblessed,  and 
forced  virtue,  that  belongs  to  the  false  gospel  of  asceti- 
cism. Happily  the  evil  is  mitigated  by  the  fact  that, 
when  we  go  into  sacrifice  and  suffering  for  others,  we 
break  away  from  such  asceticism,  without  knowing  it, 
and  come  into  the  genuine,  positive  kind  of  sacrifice 
with  Christ  himself. 

4.  Still  another  and  different  kind  of  misconception 
is  included  in  the  denial  of  vicarious  sacrifice  to  men, 
in  the  fact  that  it  forbids  us  to  think  of  reciprocating, 
in  any  sense,  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  for  us,  and  takes 


CHAP.  V.   TO   BE  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE.  Ill 

away,  in  that  manner,  one  of  the  dearest,  most  soften- 
ing and  soul-renewing  exercises.  What  should  the  true 
love  in  us  do  so  naturally,  and  with  an  ™  , 

J '  To    be    afflicted 

instinct  so  free,  as  to  take  all  Christ's  with  Christ  recip- 
feeling  on  its  feeling ;  to  suffer  with  him  rocally' 
in  his  suffering  of  all  kinds ;  to  burden  itself  in  all  his 
burdens ;  to  be  afflicted  in  all  the  losses,  apostasies,  and 
dishonors  that  shame  his  saving  work ;  because  they 
wound  so  deeply  his  divine  sensibility.  As  Christ  be- 
came a  suffering  Saviour  for  our  sake,  so  the  love  he 
begets  in  us  will  take  every  wrong  done  him  as  done 
to  itself,  and  will  gladly  suffer  also  for  his  sake. 
Whether  in  fact  we  take  it  or  not  as  a  thing  permitted 
us,  to  be  entered  into  his  burden  as  he  into  ours,  we 
shall  as  certainly  do  it  as  we  love  him.  Only  it  makes 
a  very  great  difference  whether  we  do  it  against  some 
speculated  doctrine  of  substitution  that  gives  only  him 
the  right  to  act  vicariously,  or  do  it  as  the  natural  privi- 
lege and  inborn  right  of  our  love.  In  one  case,  we  do 
it  feebly,  or  even  cringingly,  lest  we  venture  too  far 
and  do  some  presumptuous  thing;  in  the  other  we  say 
"  Let  me  do  it,  I  must  have  it  for  my  privilege.  If 
Christ  is  afflicted  for  me,  or  in  me,  shall  I  not  be  afflicted 
for  his  affliction  ?  If  he  is  wounded  by  his  friends,  or 
his  enemies,  shall  I  not  be  wounded  for  his  wounds  ?  If 
he  says,  '  my  yoke,'  shall  I  not  take  that  yoke  upon  me 
for  his  sake  ?  Grant  me  this,  O  Saviour  and  Lord,  to 
bear  thy  load  with  thee,  as  thou  hast  borne  the  load  of 
my  sins ;  to  feel  thy  feeling,  suffer  in  thy  suffering ;  and, 
to  crown  all,  as  thou  didst  bear  witness  to  the  truth  in 


112  ALL    SOULS    REDEEMED,  PART! 

thy  death,  let  me  not  shrink  from  even  dying  to  bear 
witness  for  thee."  Just  this  feeling  it  is  that  has  ani- 
mated and  armed  the  host  of  Christian  martyrs  in  all  the 
past  ages.  Called  to  die,  as  they  believed,  for  Christ's 
sake,  that  has  been  enough.  And  how  blessed  and 
divine  a  thing  is  it  always  for  the  otherwise  weak,  dis- 
tracted heart  of  a  sinner,  to  come  to  the  great  world- 
containing  heart  of  its  Kedeemer  and  have  its  opportu- 
nity in  suffering  with  him!  Nor  is  it  any  thing  to 
object,  that  there  is  a  genuine  reality  in  his  vicarious 
suffering,  because,  in  taking  our  evils,  he  takes  them  off 
from  us,  while  we,  in  taking  his,  remove  no  burden 
from  him.  Is  he  not  as  truly  a  sacrifice  then  for  those 
who  will  die  in  their  sins,  as  for  those  who 'take  the  sav- 
ing benefit  he  brings  ?  Besides,  how  does  it  appear  that 
our  bearing  of  his  burdens  with  him  takes  off  nothing 
from  the  weight  of  his  burdens  ?  When  is  any  great 
benefactor  more  strengthened  and  comforted  in  his  pains 
of  sacrifice,  than  when  some  most  dejected,  weakest 
child  of  sorrow  comes  to  bless  him  and  asks  to  suffer 
with  him?  What  again  do  we  see,  but  that  Christ 
himself,  as  in  the  scene  of  his  agony,  turns  wistfully  to 
his  disciples,  craving  just  this  kind  of  sympathy  and 
chiding  them  in  wounded  feeling  that  he  has  it  not — 
"Tarry  ye  here  and  watch  with  me — could  ye  not 
watch  with  me  one  hour?"  And  as  then  he  turned 
imploringly  to  his  friends  and  besought  them  to  watch 
with  him,  will  it  not  be  a  cordial  now  to  his  often 
wounded  compassions,  when  the  little  ones  of  the  earth 
are  for  love's  sake  wounded  with  him  ? 


CHAP.  V.   TO  BE   IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE.  113 

In  these  specifications,  or  specified  corrections,  we 
have  seen  exactly  what  and  how  much  is  implied  in  the 
position,  that  we,  as  a  race,  in  being  restored  to  God, 
are  to  be  perfected  in  the  common,  universal  standard 
of  goodness,  and  so  to  be  established  with  Christ  in  the 
same  way  of  sacrifice.  We  are  thus  prepared  to  open 
the  Scriptures,  and  take  their  declarations  in  their  true 
meaning.  To  them,  accordingly,  I  now  appeal ;  for  it  is  a 
question  resting  on  their  simple  authority,  and  no  other. 

I  begin  with  the  explicit  declarations  of  Jesus  himself. 
Thus,  considering  his  own  life  as  a  ransom  for  sin,  in 
the  sacrifice  to  be  made  of  it,  he  lays  it  n,  . 

Christ  calls  hut 

on  his  disciples  to  follow  him  and  be,   followers  to  follow 
if  they  may,  the  ransom  purchase  of 
others,  saying — "  even  as  the  Son  of  Man  came,  not  to 
be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister,  and  to  give  his  life 
a  ransom  for  many." 

Again,  citing  his  own  cross,  when,  as  yet,  nobody 
understands  what  it  means,  least  of  all  that  God's  own 
love  supports  a  cross  of  patience  even  from  eternity,  he 
says — "  And  he  that  taketh  not  up  his  cross  and  follow- 
eth  after  me  is  not  worthy  of  me."  He  does  not  mean 
by  this  that  he  is  under  a  cross  of  abnegation,  but  only 
that  he  is  going  to  be  crucified  for  love's  sake.  For 
love's  sake  and  work,  therefore,  they  are  to  suffer  with 
him,  and  bear  a  cross  after  him. 

He  calls  us  in  the  same  way  to  bear  his  "yoke "  and 
"learn  of  him"  in  doing  it;  for  there  is  a  way,  as  he 
will  teach,  to  bear  love's  burdens  joyfully.  They  shall 
not  be  dry  penances  or  heavy  laden  drudgeries,  he  tes- 

10* 


114  ALL    SOULS    REDEEMED,  PART! 

tifies,  but  only  such  sacrifices  of  joy  as  love  itself 
will  assume  for  its  objects — "  the  yoke,  therefore,  is  easy 
and  the  burden  light." 

His  death  is  to  be  the  crowning  fact  of  his  sacrifice,  as 
all  agree,  and  yet,  he  does  not  claim  any  exclusive  right 
to  die  in  this  ma'nner,  but  even  lays  it  down  as  the  uni- 
versal test  of  love  and  discipleship — "  If  any  man  come 
to  me,  and  hate  not  his  father,  and  mother,  and  wife, 
and  children,  and  brethren,  and  sisters,  yea,  and  his  own 
life  also,  he  can  not  be  my  disciple."  Obedience  unto 
death  is  to  be  a  law  for  them  as  truly  as  for  him. 

He  contrives  furthermore  a  scene,  at  the  close  of  his 
ministry,  where  the  great  main  truth  is  to  be  acted  and  so 
made  visible — I  refer  to  the  scene  of  washing  the  disci- 
ples' feet — where  his  language,  most  carefully  measured, 
and  his  action,  most  deliberately  formal,  quite  exceed 
the  supposition  of  many,  that  he  is  only  teaching,  in  this 
way,  the  single  grace  of  humility.  Neither,  at  this  sol- 
emn, almost  parting  hour,  can  it  be  imagined,  that  he  is 
laboring  any  such  limited  and  subordinate  matter. 
Rather  is  he  condensing  all  the  matter  of  his  humiliated 
suffering  life  of  sacrifice,  into  a  single  scene,  or  picture, 
or  parabolic  action,  that  he  may  impress  it  in  a  total  ap- 
plication on  his  disciples.  And  so  he  says  at  the  end — 
"  Know  ye  what  I  have  done  to  you  ?  Ye  call  me  Mas- 
ter and  Lord,  and  ye  say  well,  for  so  I  am.  If  I,  then, 
your  Lord  and  Master,  have  washed  your  feet,  ye  also 
ought  to  wash  one  another's  feet.  For  I  have  given 
you  an  example  that  ye  should  do  as  I  have  done  to 
you."  In  one  word,  for  that  is  what  he  means,  "  as  I 


CHAP.  V.    TO  BE   IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE.  115 

have  stood  back  from  no  sacrifice,  or  shame,  for  you,  at 
the  low  point  of  your  sin,  so  are  you  to  seek  and  serve, 
all  pride  apart,  the  perishing  brothers  of  your  race." 

Again,  if  we  imagine  something  official  in  his  mission 
of  sacrifice,  we  find  him  consecrating  his  disciples,  in 
his  last  prayer,  to  the  same  mission  and  in  fact  the  same 
office — "  As  thou  hast  sent  me  unto  the  world,  even  so 
have  I  sent  them  into  the  world.  And  for  their  sakes 
I  sanctify  myself,  that  they  also  may  be  sanctified 
through  (literally  in  or  uponj  the  truth."  However 

il^      true  the  doctrine  for  which  this  is  commonly  cited  as  a 
&r  proof  text,  nothing  could  be  farther  from  any  thought 

l^^  of  his  on  the  present  occasion,  than  to  be  discoursing  on 
the  truth  as  a  means  of  sanctification.  He  obviously 
means  to  say — "  And  for  their  sakes  I  consecrate  myself 

1^  as  an  offering,  that  they  also  may  be  consecrated  and 
offered,  in  like  manner,  in  the  service,  or  upon  the  dying 
testimony,  of  the  truth.  So  he  says,  "  for  their  sakes," 

.^y\    as  if  he  had  come  into  his  sacrifice,  in  part,  that  he  may 
put  them  in  the  same — so  to  send  them  into  the  world, 
•^    even  as  he  was  sent  into  the  world. 

Now  the  impressive  matter,  in  all  these  citations, 

j/r  which  might  be  indefinitely  extended,  is  that  Christ 
expects  his  followers  to  be  with  him  at  the  very  point 
of  his  sacrifice ;  just  where  it  is  even  commonly  as- 
sumed that  we  can,  of  course,  have  no  part  with  him, 
and  where  it  would  even  be  a  kind  of  insufferable  pre- 
sumption for  a  mortal  to  think  of  it. 

We  pass  now  to  a  different  and  more  interiorly  related 
class  of  citations ;  in  which  it  will  be  seen,  that  the  whole 


116  ALL    SOULS    REDEEMED,  PART  L 

economy  itself  of  Christian  virtue  is  based  in  the  prin- 
ciple, and  flavored  by  the  spirit  of  vicarious  sacrifice. 

Thus  it  will  be  noted  in  the  very  first  discourse  of 
Jesus,  his  sermon  on  the  mount,  that  he  can  not  even 
he  eco  get  through  the  beatitudes,  and  scarcely 
nomic  law  of  disci-  into  them,  without  opening  to  view,  and 
turning  round  for  inspection,  this  grand 
first  principle  of  devotement  and  unselfish  love.  Blessed 
are  the  poor  in  spirit,  they  that  mourn,  the  meek,  the 
merciful — these  to  him  are  the  candidates  for  beatitude ; 
and  we  see,  from  his  subdued  and  tender  manner,  that 
he  is  thinking  of  his  own  sacrifice  and  beatitude.  And 
thus  it  is  that  he  goes  directly  on,  to  tell  his  friends  how 
they  will  be  reviled  and  persecuted  by  those  whom  they 
serve,  and  for  his  sake,  adding — "  Blessed  are  ye.  Re- 
sist  not  evil.  Smitten  upon  the  right  cheek  turn  the 
left.  Robbed  of  your  coat  give  up  your  cloak.  Love 
your  enemies,  bless  them  which  curse  you,  do  good  to 
them  that  hate  you,  and  pray  for  them  that  despitefully 
use  you  and  persecute  you;  that  (this  is  the  argu- 
ment, and  how  high  does  it  reach)  ye  may  be  the 
children  of  your  Father  in  heaven.  Be  ye  therefore 
perfect  even  as  your  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect." 
There  has  been  much  debate  over  this  language.  It 
means  simply  this ;  that  we  are  to  have  one  standard 
even  with  God,  and  that,  a  law  of  sacrifice  and  suffering 
patience — the  same  which  Christ  himself  fulfills. 

What  the  feeling  of  Christ  is  respecting  the  participa- 
tion of  his  sacrifice  by  his  followers,  comes  out  even 
more  strikingly,  on  a  certain  occasion,  from  the  fact  that 


CHAP.  V.    TO   BE   IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE.  117 

he  is  drawn  away  to  it,  by  his  associations,  without  ap- 
parently any  previous  intention.  He  is  led  to  speak 
of  his  death,  and  of  the  general  principle  that  the  good 
must  die,  in  order  to  be  fruitful — "  Except  a  corn  of 
wheat  fall  into  the  ground  and  die  it  abideth  alone  ;  but 
if  it  die  it  bringeth  forth  much  fruit."  And  then,  as  if 
drawn  along  to  think  by  degrees  of  others,  and  finally 
of  none  but  others,  he  adds — "  He  that  loveth  his  life 
shall  lose  it,  and  he  that  hateth  his  life  in  this  world 
shall  keep  it  unto  life  eternal.  If  any  man  serve  me 
let  him  follow  me."  How  close  the  relation  between 
him  and  his  disciples,  when  he  calls  them,  in  this  man- 
ner, into  his  very  death  itself,  and  commands  them  to 
be  with  him,  in  all  the  sublime  economy  of  sacrifice  by 
which  he  is  reconciling  the  world. 

His  apostles,  accordingly,  follow  after,  teaching,  all, 
the  same  great  law  of  sacrifice,  and  presenting  a  gospel 
packed  with  symbols  of  sacrifice  in  The  apostles  fol- 
every  part.  This  word  sacrifice  they  low  their  Ma8ter- 
apply  to  men  as  freely  as  to  Christ  himself;  Paul  ex- 
horting, "  I  beseech  you  therefore,  brethren,  by  the 
mercies  of  God,  that  ye  present  your  bodies  a  living 
sacrifice."  "  Let  no  man  seek  his  own."  "  Bear  ye 
one  another's  burdens  and  so  fulfill  the  law  of  Christ." 
11  Let  this  mind  be  in  you  which  was  also  in  Christ 
Jesus,  who,  being  in  the  form  of  God,  took  upon  him 
the  form  of  a  servant,  and  became  obedient  unto  death, 
even  the  death  of  the  cross ;"  Peter,  when  he  writes, 
"  For  what  glory  is  it,  if,  when  ye  be  buffeted  for  your 
faults,  ye  take  it  patiently,  but  if,  when  ye  do  well,  ye 


118  ALL    SOULS    REDEEMED,  PART  I. 

take  it  patiently,  this  is  acceptable  with  God.  For  even 
hereunto  were  ye  called ;  because  Christ  also  suffered  for 
us,  leaving  us  an  example  that  ye  should  follow  his 
steps.  "But  rejoice,  inasmuch  as  ye  are  made  par- 
takers of  Christ's  sufferings."  "  If  any  man  suffer  as  a 
Christian,  let  him  not  be  ashamed,  but  let  him  glorify 
(rod  on  this  behalf;"  John,  also,  when  he  writes, 
"  Hereby  perceive  we  the  love  of  God,  because  he  laid 
down  his  life  for  us,  and  we  ought  to  lay  down  our 
lives  for  the  brethren."  "  Beloved,  if  God  so  loved  us, 
we  ought  also  to  love  one  another." 

In  these  and  other  like  passages  which  might  be  cited, 
from  Christ  and  his  three  apostles,  it  is  very  commonly 
not  discovered,  I  admit,  that  any  such,  thing  as  a  vicari- 
ous element  is  included  in  the  Christian  virtue.  Every 
such  conception  is  excluded  by  the  reverently  meant, 
but  most  injuriously  false  and  really  irreverent  assump- 
tion, that  nothing  vicarious,  whether  in  spirit  or  mode 
of  life,  is  possible  to  a  merely  human  being.  Christ 
takes  this  whole  field,  it  is  believed,  to  himself,  let  no 
sinning  mortal  intrude !  And  vet,  when 

Mock  sentiment.      .  .  J 

this  vicarious  meaning,  or  element  is 
excluded  from  the  passages  referred  to,  they  become 
passages  of  mock  sentiment  only ;  words  that  have  a 
sound,  but  no  deep,  earnest  meaning.  Their  real  and 
truly  magnificent  import  is,  that  it  lies  in  the  very 
scheme  and  economy  of  the  gospel,  to  regenerate  a 
Christly  virtue  in  men,  a  character  that  bears  the  type 
of  Gethsemane  and  the  cross. 

Again  we  discover  a  closer,  in  some  respects  even 


CHAP.  V.  TO  BE  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE.          119 

more  convincing  kind  of  evidence,  in  the  testimony 
given  by  one  of  Christ's  disciples  out  of  his  own  human 
consciousness;  I  speak  of  the  apostle  The Pauline con. 
Paul.  The  same  is  discoverable  in  stiousness. 
others,  only  in  a  manner  less  striking.  In  later  times, 
for  example  in  George  Fox,  the  Christly  consciousness 
is  revealed  in  a  manner  almost  equally  sublime.  Now 
Paul  is  but  a  man,  and  yet  he  is  a  man  so  Christed,  or 
possessed  by  Christ,  that  the  very  sacrifice  of  Christ  is 
consciously  and  even  visibly  in  him.  As  regards  men- 
tal suffering,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed,  of  course,  that 
Paul  had  any  sensibility  capable  of  as  intense  feeling ; 
or  any  love  to  mankind  capable  of  being  as  heavily 
burdened,  as  Christ  is  seen  to  be  in  what  is  called  his 
agony ;  but  in  respect  of  mere  physical  suffering,  I  see 
no  reason  to  judge  that  Christ  made  a  heavier  sacrifice, 
in  his  three  years'  ministry  and  death,  than  his  servant 
did,  in  his  long,  laborious,  always  imperiled,  persecuted 
life  and  martyrdom.  So  deep  was  he  in  the  spirit  of 
his  Master,  so  heartily  entered  with  him  into  the  bur- 
dens of  love.  He  can  not  even  hide  it  from  himself 
that  he  is  in  his  Master's  sacrifice — "Always  bearing 
about,"  he  says,  "in  the  body  the  dying  of  the  Lord 
Jesus,  that  the  life  also  of  Jesus  might  be  made  manifest 
in  our  body.  For  we,  which  live,  are  alway  delivered 
unto  death  for  Jesus'  sake,  that  the  life  also  of  Jesus 
might  be  made  manifest  in  our  mortal  flesh."  He  dares 
even  to  conceive  that  his  suffering  life  is  somehow  com- 
plementary to  that  of  his  Master — "  Who  now  rejoice  in 
my  sufferings  for  you,  and  fill  up  that  which  is  behind 


120  ALL    SOULS    REDEEMED,  PART! 

of  the  afflictions  of  Christ  in  my  flesh,  for  his  body's 
sake,  which  is  the  church.  Under  the  heading — "as 
workers  together  with  him,"*  he  goes  on  to  catalogue,  in 
almost  a  whole  chapter,  these  Christly  losses,  works,  and 
pains,  that  he  is  bearing  with  Christ  and  for  his  sake. 
Nor  is  it  mere  bodily  hardship  and  peril  that  he  under- 
goes ;  we  find  him,  at  times  and  according  to  his  meas- 
ure, in  a  kind  of  mental  Gethsemane,  for  the  burden  of 
love,  and  care,  and  grief  for  others,  which  has  come 
upon  him ;  as  when  he  writes — "  I  have  great  heavi- 
ness and  continual  sorrow  of  heart ;  for  I  could  wish 
that  myself  were  accursed  from  Christ,  for  my  brethren, 
rny  kinsmen,  according  to  the  flesh."  There  has  been 
much  debate  over  these  words  ;  but  a  soul  that  is  really 
under  Christ's  yoke,  and  bearing  his  burdens,  will  be 
deep  enough  in  the  struggle  of  vicarious  sacrifice,  to 
know  what  they  mean.  Furthermore,  it  is  remarkable, 
that  Paul  has  reached  no  such  point  of  theologic  scru- 
ple, that  he  can  not  freely  apply  to  his  own  life  just  the 
same  sacrificial  terms  that  he  applies  to  Christ  himself — 
"  I  am  now  ready  to  be  offered."  "  Yea,  and  if  I  be 
offered  upon  the  sacrifice  and  service  of  your  faith,  I 
joy  and  rejoice  with  you  all."  He  goes  still  farther, 
exhorting  all  Christians  to  be  offered  willingly  in  sacri- 
fice like  their  Master — "  And  walk  in  love,  as  Christ, 
also  hath  loved  us,  and  given  himself  for  an  offering 
and  a  sacrifice  to  God,  for  a  sweet-smelling  savor." 

This  now  is  the  true  Christian  consciousness,  in  all  of 
the  best  and  noblest  human  examples.     The  gospel  of 

*  2  Cor.  vi. 


CHAP.  V.  TO   BE   IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFIi 

life  takes  hold  of  a  man  all  selfish,  a  fierj^n^jprou^ 
persecutor,  and  it  so  changes  all  his  inward  aims  and 
feelings,  that  he  lives  no  more  for  himself,  but  for  others ; 
encountering  perils,  pains,  privations,  indignities  for 
his  whole  life  long  on  their  account ;  so  burdened  for 
them  in  feeling,  at  times,  that  he  could  even  find  relief 
in  the  imprecation  that  he  might  be  accursed  from 
Christ  for  their  sake.  So  clearly  is  the  Christian  be- 
liever entered  himself,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  into  the  vica- 
rious sacrifice  of  Jesus.  This  is  the  new  character  it 
undertakes  to  beget  in  him,  and  the  exact  amount  he 
has  of  Christian  evidence  is  graduated  by  the  amount 
of  this  new  character  found  in  his  life. 

I  have  given  this  large  review  of  the  Scripture  cita- 
tions on  this  subject,  that  it  may  be  seen  how  freely, 
variously,  constantly,  they  consent  in  the  testimony, 
that  Christianity  begets,  and,  is  to  beget,  in  human 
character,  the  same  kind  of  sacrifice  that  is  found,  or 
revealed  in  Christ.  I  have  selected  only  a  few  of  the 
passages  that  persist  most  undivertibly  in  this  kind  of 
testimony.  It  is  not  then  by  any  speculation,  or  undue 
pressure  on  words,  that  I  gain  this  conclusion. 
Nothing  but  a  theologic  pressure,  kept  up  for  ages,  has 
availed  to  empty  the  Scripture  of  a  truth  that  is  so 
plainly  taught,  under  so  great  a  multitude  of  forms,  and 
is  set  even  in  the  foreground  of  the  Christian  plan. 

Arresting  my  argument  here,  I  still  can  not  close  the 
chapter,  without  calling  my  reader's  attention  to  the 
immense  loss  Christianity  has  suffered,  and  is  now  suf- 

11 


122  ALL    SOULS    REDEEMED,  PART  I. 

fering,  in  losing  out  the  faith  that  Christ  is  to  be  really 

followed  by  his  followers.     There  is  little  importance  in 

these  discussions,  if  they  do  not  help  the 

The    immense 

damage  suffered  gospel  to  assert  its  true  idea,  and  exert 
that  practical  power  it  has  undertaken  to 
exert  on  the  world.  And  whatever  hinders,  or  weakens 
that  power,  even  though  it  take  the  name  of  Christian 
doctrine  and  is  fairly  meant  as  such,  is  about  the  great- 
est wrong  that  can  be  committed  against  both  Christ 
and  mankind.  What  then  shall  we  think  of  any  theo- 
logic  doctrine  or  dictum,  that  makes  a  blank  space  at 
the  very  heart  of  the  gospel,  or  which  raises  fences  of 
obstruction,  to  keep  men  off  from  just  that  common 
standard  of  the  heavenly  virtue,  in  which  all  perfect 
minds  are  to  meet ;  which  breaks  down  the  fact  of  com- 
munity between  Christ  and  his  disciples ;  which  says, 
this  kind  is  for  Christ,  another  for  mankind;  which 
gives  him  love  in  its  genuine  power,  and  gives  them 
love  in  a  sense  so  qualified,  that  all  his  most  living  and 
life-giving  sacrifices  would  be  stifled  under  it.  The 
supreme  art  of  the  devil  never  invented  a  greater  mis- 
chief to  be  done,  or  a  theft  more  nearly  amounting  to 
the  stealing  of  the  cross  itself,  than  the  filching  away 
thus,  from  the  followers  of  Christ,  the  conviction  that 
they  are  thoroughly  to  partake  the  sacrifice  of  their 
master.  Such  words  I  know  sound  harshly,  but  they 
are  not  harshly  meant.  I  raise  no  accusation  in  them ; 
for  I  do  not,  for  a  moment,  imagine  that  perversity,  or 
art,  or  any  malign  purpose  has  ever  been  concerned  in 
the  mischief  referred  to.  I  only  use  strong  language  to 


CHAP.  V.   TO  BE  IN  VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE.  123 

express  my  own  strong  convictions ;  taking  this'  very 
deplorable  matter  simply  as  an  example  of  the  immense, 
and  fearfully  desolating  wrong  that  may  be  done  to 
God's  truth  and  the  world,  by  the  well  meant,  but  mis- 
guided, speculations  and  schemings  of  men,  whose  theo- 
ries unwittingly  reduce  the  gospel  to  their  own  meas- 
ures. Having  found  a  necessity  that  God's  justice 
should  be  satisfied  by  some  given  quantum  of  suffering, 
and  that  Christ,  in  his  death,  made  the  contribution  for 
us  of  that  suffering,  and  that  in  this  fact  is  contained  all 
that  belongs  to  his  vicarious  sacrifice,  what  should  they 
infer  but  that  we,  in  following  Christ,  are  excluded,  of 
course,  from  any  such  kind  of  sacrifice  ?  All  which  is 
done  with  the  better  feeling  of  reverence,  that  it  puts 
the  Saviour  in  a  figure  of  merit  so  superlative ! 

The  effect  that  follows  is  such  as  only  can.  It  is  as 
if  the  gift  of  the  incarnation  had  been  half  taken  back 
again.  A  wide  hiatus  still  yawns  be-  mot8  of  the 
tween  even  the  ideal  of  our  virtue,  and  hiatus  between 
that  of  our  Christ.  Nor  is  it  any  thing  U8andchrist- 
to  say,  that  whatever  he  does  vicariously  belongs  to  his 
office,  and  that  we  have  no  such  office.  It  belongs,  we 
have  already  seen,  not  to  his  office,  but  to  his  character ; 
that  is  to  his  love,  which  is  the  spring  of  his  character ; 
the  same,  which  is  the  root  of  all  goodness  in  all  good 
beings,  drawing  them  as  good  to  such  as  are  evil,  and 
putting  them  in  a  way  of  tender  self-identification,  that 
virtually  assumes  and  bears  the  bad  and  shameful  lot  it 
compassionates.  Without  this  vicarious  property,  love 
is  not  love.  Pity  there  may  be,  philanthropic  benevo- 


124  ALL    SOULS    REDEEMED,  PART! 

lence,  esteem,  approbation,  admiration,  but  the  vital  dis- 
tinction of  love  is  wanting.  It  is  very  true  that  we  are 
not  to  set  ourselves  up  as  Redeemers  of  the  world.  Our 
petty  measures  of  quantity  and  character  forbid  such  a 
thought;  just  as  any  feeble  and  low  man  would  be  only 
absurd,  in  attempting  what  is  given  to  some  most 
qualified  and  strongest  man  of  his  own  species.  Still 
any  such  feeble  and  low  man  is  to  be,  and  may  truly 
be,  in  the  same  kind  of  love  with  one  who  is  most 
qualified  and  strongest.  Nay,  if  this  latter  has  been 
suffering  and  painfully  watching  for  him,  it  will  even 
be  a  chief  point  of  his  benefit  and  the  raising  of  his 
life,  that  he  so  loves  the  person  of  his  benefactor  as 
to  suffer  his  suffering.  And  just  so  it  is  that  Christ,  in 
his  suffering  love — always  a  fact,  and  only  a  fact  revealed 
in  his  agony  and  passion — gets  never  the  just  degree  of 
power  in  our  feeling,  till  we  are  able  to  love  his  love  and 
suffer  with  him  in  his  suffering.  Here  only  it  is  that  he 
touches  us  at  the  quick,  and  becomes  the  soul  renewing 
power  of  God.  Vicarious  love  in  him  answered  by  vi- 
carious love  in  us,  tiny  and  weak  though  it  be,  as  an 
insect  life  fluttering  responsively  to  the  sun — this  is  the 
only  footing  of  grace,  in  which  Christ  is  truly  received, 
and  according  to  his  glorious  power.  Hence,  in  no 
small  degree,  the  amazing  dullness  of  the  gospel  to 
men's  feeling,  and  even  in  men's  feeling  after  they  seem 
to  have  believed — we  wonder  often  how  it  is  ourselves. 
It  is  because  there  is  no  common  footing  between  them 
and  their  Lord ;  because,  in  his  superlative  merit  and 
suffering,  he  takes  a  different  plane,  from  which  they  are 


CHAP.  V.  TO  BE   IN   VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE.          125 

excluded.  They  are  shut  away,  thus,  from  exactly 
what  is  most  vital  and  most  quickening  in  his  passion. 
The  cord  of  sympathy  is  cut,  at  just  the  point  where  it 
was  to  have  the  closest  tension,  and  be  most  stringently 
effective. 

Doubtless  it  will  be  said,  in  reply,  that  such  kind  of 
criticism  is  unjust.  While  it  is  very  true  that  we  ex- 
clude ourselves  from  any  part  with  Christ  in  what  is 
vicarious,  do  we  not  always  insist  that  men  are  to  fol- 
low Christ,  to  bear  the  cross,  to  deny  themselves,  to  suf- 
fer wrong,  to  love  and  bless  even  their  enemies  ?  Un- 
doubtedly, but  how  blurred,  how  sadly  miscolored  are 
all  such  teachings,  when  the  huge  exception  we  speak 
of  is  added.  They  are  now  to  follow  Christ  in  just  that 
limited  kind  of  sacrifice  which  he  knew  nothing  of. 
They  are  to  bear  the  cross  for  the  discipline,  and  not 
for  what  love  sees  to  be  won  by  a  cross.  They  are  to 
deny  themselves  because  it  is  good  to  put  themselves 
under  negation,  or  self-suppression — even  as  the  monas- 
teries kill  out  selfishness  by  the  wearisome  and  dry  tor- 
ment of  ascetic  practices — not  to  deny  themselves  in 
love's  own  suffering,  but  joyful  and  free  ministry. 
They  are  to  suffer  wrong  even  as  Christ  did,  only  they 
are  to  do  it  in  no  such  feeling  as  he  did,  when  he  bore 
the  lot  of  transgression.  They  are  to  love  and  bless 
enemies,  because  it  will  school  them  in  patience  and  hu- 
mility, not  as  Christ  bore  enemies  out  of  pure  devote- 
ment  to  them ;  or  they  are  to  exercise  themselves  in 
acts  of  benevolence  towards  enemies,  towards  the  im- 
penitent, towards  the  heathen,  in  the  name  of  love; 
11* 


126  ALL    SOULS    REDEEMED,    ETC.  PART! 

when  confessedly  they  are  excluded  from  any  such  ten- 
der identification  with  their  bad  lot  as  Christ,  for  love's 
sake,  took  upon  him  when  he  bore  their  sins. 

And  so  it  results  that  our  discipleship,  so  called,  is  a 
discipleship  fallen  half  way  out  of  Christianity,  even  as 
our  theology  of  the  cross  becomes  a  dry,  stunted,  half  con- 
ception of  it ;  reducing  Christ  to  a  mere  book-account 
factor  of  compensation  by  suffering,  and  making  nothing 
of  him  as  the  revelation  of  vicarious  sacrifice  in  God ; 
that  which  is  the  supreme  fact  and  glory  of  his  incar- 
nate mission.  Did  we  see  this  glory  upon  him,  did  we 
look  upon  him  as  sent  into  the  world  to  beget  us  in  the 
same  character,  and  enter  us  into  the  same  kind  of  life, 
how  different  our  conceptions  of  his  doctrine,  how  dif- 
ferent the  whole  manner  and  power  of  our  discipleship. 
The  scheme,  and  scale,  and  meaning,  of  the  gospel,  as  a 
grace  related  to  our  feeling  and  life,  is  no  more  the 
same.  And  the  world,  having  such  a  grace  installed  in 
it,  would  begin,  how  soon,  to  glow,  and  burn,  and  tin- 
gle with  new  life  in  every  part. 


PART    II 


THE    LIFE    AND    SACRIFICE    OF    CHRIST 

18    WHAT    HE    DOES    TO    BECOME    A 

RENOVATING    AND    SAVING 

POWER. 


V  //  , 


s<  * 


ifv^- 


^^X 

/          «     ^       ^' 


CHAPTER  I. 

USES  AND  RELATIONS  OF  THE  HEALING  MINISTRY. 

ALL  the  perplexed  questions  growing  out  of  substi- 
tutions, imputations,  legal  satisfactions,  and  penal  equiv- 
alents, have  thus  far  been  avoided.  There  has  been  no 
delving  in  our  exposition,  but  we  have  been  moving 
easily  rather,  along  open  ranges  of  thought,  where 
nothing  too  abstruse,  or  difficult  to  serve  a  merely  prac- 
tical interest,  has  come  in  our  way.  In  this  manner,  we 
have  gone  over  a  considerable  tract  of  our  field,  meeting 
scarcely  a  point  of  debate,  in  the  subject  as  commonly 
handled.  We  have  discovered  a  meaning,  not  difficult, 
for  the  vicarious  sacrifice,  and  for  all  the  Scripture 
phraseology  relating  to  the  same.  We  have  seen  it  to 
be  grounded  in  principles  of  universal  obligation,  ac- 
knowledged, or  to  be  acknowledged,  by  all  good  minds, 
uncreated  and  created,  in  all  worlds  and  ages  of  time. 

Having  reached  this  point,  we  now  pass  to  another 
general  department  of  the  subject ;  where,  continuing  still 
in  this  rather  untrodden,  some  will  think,  too  easy  level 
of  movement,  we  undertake  to  settle  a  second  stage  of 
true  conception  of  what  Christ  is  doing  the  argument. 
in  his  sacrifice ;  viz.,  the  end  he  will  accomplish,  the 
power  by  which  he  will  accomplish  it,  and  the  course 


130  USES    AND   RELATIONS    OF  PART  II. 

of  life  and  benefaction  by  which  he  will  obtain  that 
power. 

When  this  also  is  done,  as  I  think  it  may  be  with  the 
same  facility  and  avoidance  of  perplexed  questions,  we 
may  well  enough  comfort  ourselves  in  the  conclusion, 
that,  if  by  and  by,  or  from  that  point  onward,  we  are 
obliged  to  go  to  sea  in  questions  more  perplexed  and 
laborious,  we  have  a  considerable  continent  already 
gained  behind  us,  where  we  shall  have  large  enough 
room,  and  ranges  wide  enough  in  the  truth,  to  afford  a 
worthy,  or  even  sufficient  gospel  by  itself. 

According  to  a  current  conception,  Christ  came  into 
the  world  for  the  very  purpose  of  the  sacrifice,  and  not 

Christ  not  here  for  ends  ^yond,  in  which  the  stress  of 
to  die,  but  dies  be-  his  mission  lay.  The  problem  being  to 

cause  he  is  here.         CQntribute  go  much   of  paill)  or  judicial 

suffering,  as  may  be  needed  to  square  the  account  of 
sin,  the  conclusion  naturally  follows,  when  that  view  is 
taken,  that  he  is  here  for  the  very  purpose  of  the  bleed- 
ing ;  that  is  to  be  substituted  in  our  place,  and  take,  or 
somehow  compensate  for,  the  release  of  our  punishment. 
This,  and  not  any  thing  different,  is  the  coarsely  con- 
ceived, legally  quantitative  vicariousness  ascribed  to 
him.  We,  on  the  other  hand,  regard  the  vicariousness 
in  which  he  comes,  only  as  the  mode,  or  instinct  of  his 
love,  when  doing  a  work  in  the  recovery  and  reconcilia- 
tion of  men.  He  was  in  vicarious  sacrifice  before  he 
came  into  the  world,  having  the  world  upon  his  feeling 
.as  truly  as  now,  and  only  made  the  fact-form  sacrifice, 
ibecause  he  had  the  burden  of  it  on  him  already.  The 

,    & 

• 


CHAP.  I.  THE    HEALING    MINISTRY.  131 

sacrifice,  taken  as  a  fact  in  time,  was  not  set  before  him 
as  the  end,  or  object  of  his  ministry — that  would  make 
it  a  mere  pageant  of  suffering,  without  rational  digni- 
ty, or  character — but,  when  it  came,  it  was  simply  the 
bad  fortune  such  a  work,  prosecuted  with  such  devotion, 
must  encounter  on  its  way.  The  missionary,  going  out 
to  spend  his  days  among  a  heathen  people,  does  not  go 
to  make  so  much  of  sacrifice,  including  even  that  per- 
haps of  life  itself — that  being  his  purpose  he  might  bet- 
ter stay  at  home — but  he  makes  the  sacrifice  when  the 
fit  hour  comes,  because  he  is  in  a  work,  and  because  the 
work  requires  it  of  him.  Christ,  then,  we  must  be- 
lieve, is  here  to  do  something — some  great  and  mighty 
work — not  to  make  up  a  necessary  quantum  of  pain, 
for  the  compensation  of  God's  justice.  The  sacrifice  he 
makes,  in  becoming  a  man  of  sorrows,  and  dying  a  mal- 
efactor's death,  will  be  suffered  under  his  work,  and 
only  for  his  work's  sake.  He  was  not  ignorant,  of 
course,  that  he  would  suffer.  He  expected  that,  dying 
for  his  work  would  give  eloquence  and  power  to  his 
mission ;  just  because,  not  coming  here  to  die,  he  would 
have  it  put  upon  him  as  the  cost  of  his  fidelity.  Even 
as  Anselm  carefully  and  rightly  distinguishes,  when  he 
says—"  he  suffered  death  of  his  own  accord,  not  as 
an  act  of  obedience,  but  on  account  of  his  obedience  in 
maintaining  right ;  for  he  held  out  so  persistently,  that 
he  met  deatkon  account  of  it."* 

What  then  is  the  end  or  object  he  is  here  to  accom- 
plish ?     By  the  supposition  he  is  not  here  to  square  up 

*  Cur  Deus  Homo— Lib.  i.  Cap.  ix. 

,t,          ; 


132  USES    AND    RELATIONS    OF  PART  II. 

the  account  of  our  sin,  or  to  satisfy  the  divine  justice  for 
us.  Neither  is  it  any  principal  thing  that  he  is  here  to 
What  he  tin  PrePare  a  possibility  of  forgiveness  for 
dertakes  to  ac-  sin.  That  is,  if  any  thing,  a  secondary 
compiish.  and  subordinate  matter,  as  will.be  dis- 

covered hereafter,  in  the  Third  Part  of  my  argument. 
The  true  end,  or  object,  of  the  sacrifice  we  shall  find  is 
very  simple,  though  presented  in  the  New  Testament 
under  manifold  varieties  of  statement ;  for,  widely  dif- 
ferent as  the  varieties  are,  they  are  all  in  radical  agree- 
ment with  each  other.  Taking  our  clue  from  one  of 
the  simplest  and  tenderest  in  beauty  of  them  all — "  The 
Son  of  Man  is  come  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  is 
lost ;"  or  from  one  that  is  widest  in  range  and  contains 
the  highest  summation  of  all — "  To  wit  that  God  was  in 
Christ  reconciling  the  world  to  himself;"  or  from  one 
most  formally  put,  and,  in  a  certain  intellectual  sense, 
the  deepest  of  all—"  To  this  end  was  I  born,  and  for 
this  cause  came  I  into  the  world,  that  I  might  bear  wit- 
ness to  the  truth  " — taking  hold  of  these  and  all  such 
varieties  of  Scripture,  we  conceive  a  transaction  moving 
on  character  in  souls ;  a  regenerative,  saving,  truth-sub- 
jecting, all-restoring,  inward  change  of  the  life — in  one 
word  the  establishing  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  or  of 
heaven,  among  men,  and  the  gathering  finally  of  a  new- 
born world  into  it. 

But  the  farther  unfolding  of  this  central.idea  we  shall 
find  requires  us,  for  convenience  sake,  to  make  a  four- 
fold distribution  of  the  field  or  subject  matter.  First, 
we  shall  naturally  give  attention  directly  to  Christ's 

Hr- 


CHAP.  I.  THE    HEALING    MINISTRY.  133 

Healing  Ministry,  and  the  large  indication  there  made 
of  what  he  is  doing  and  to  do,  in  his  sacrifice  elsewhere. 
Then  we  shall  endeavor  to  show  more  exactly  in  an- 
other chapter,  what  work  he  undertakes  or  proposes  to 
do  in  souls,  by  his  sacrifice.  In  another  and  third  chap- 
ter it  will  be  shown  that,  for  that  work's  sake,  he  un- 
dertakes to  be,  and  in  the  New  Testament  writings  is 
conceived  as  being,  the  Great  Moral  Power  of  God,  for 
its  accomplishment.  And  then,  fourthly,  a  chapter 
will  be  added  to  show  how  he  becomes  that  power. 

It  is  by  no  accident  that  Christ,  not  trained  as  a  phy- 
sician, and,  as  far  as  we  can  discover,  never  before  ex- 
ercised in  matters  of  concern  for  the  No  accidentthat 
sick,  opens  out  the  grand  public  ministry  Christ  is  occupied 
of  his  Messiahship  directly  into  an  of-  with  healing9' 
fice  of  healing,  turning  the  main  stress  of  it,  we  may 
almost  say,  down  upon  the  healing  of  bodies,  from  that 
time  onward.  Hence  it  is  the  more  remarkable,  that, 
when  so  much  is  made,  in  the  formulas,  of  his  threefold 
function  under  the  the  titles  of  Prophet,  Priest,  and 
King,  he  still  makes  no  figure  in  them  at  all  as  a  Phy- 
sician or  Healer.  This  latter  he  is  in  the  literal  fact  of 
history,  and  a  great  part  of  his  outward  life  is  in  this 
particular  kind  of  engagement.  The  others  he  is,  or  is 
only  to  be,  in  some  tropical,  accommodated  sense,  where 
language  helps  its  poverty  by  a  figure  more  or  less  de- 
terminate. We  discover,  meantime,  that  while  he  does 
not  disown,  or  repel  these  figures,  permitting  himself  to 
be  called  a  prophet,  accepted  as  a  priest,  and  exalted  as 

12 


134  USES    AND    RELATIONS    OF  PART  II. 

a  king,  or  Messiah,  in  his  Kingdom,  he  does  not  con- 
ceive that  he  is  specially  distinguished  in  his  lifetime, 
at  least,  in  these  characters ;  but  assumes  that  he  is  to 
be  known  as  the  expected  man  of  prophecy,  even  from 
the  first,  by  the  works  of  his  Healing  Ministry.  Thus 
when  John  sends  messengers  to  inquire — "  Art  thou  he 
that  should  come  or  look  we  for  another?"  he  sends 
back  word  in  the  affirmative,  saying — "  Yes  I  am 
the  expected  Healer."  "  Go  tell  John  what  things  ye 
have  seen  and  heard,  how  that  the  blind  see,  the  lame 
walk,  the  lepers  are  cleansed,  the  deaf  hear,  the 
dead  are  raised,  to  the  poor  the  gospel  is  preached." 
The  plain  inference  is  that  however  much,  or  little,  may 
be  meant  by  the  three  particular  figures  above  named, 
he  is,  at  any  rate,  in  literal  and  solid  fact  of  history,  a 
healer — the  Great  expected  Healer  of  mankind. 
.  I  do  not  call  him  the  Physician,  but  the  Healer,  it 
may  be  observed ;  not  because  we  need  scruple  to  apply 
that  name,  but  simply  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  older  designation,  Healer,  is  the  one  always  applied 
Disease  oes  with  to  ^m  *u  the  New  Testament,  and  has, 
sin,  Healing  with  in  strict  construction,  a  quite  different 
meaning.  There  appears  to  be  a  deep 
seated,  original  conviction  among  men,  that  diseases  are 
from  God,  or  the  gods — tokens  of  displeasure  on  ac- 
count of  sin.  The  bad  consciousness  of  sin  volunteers 
this  appalling  construction  of  them,  and  the  sufferer 
hopes  to  recover,  only  by  some  mitigation  of  the  powers 
he  has  offended.  Hence  the  need  of  a  Healer;  one 
who  shall  have  skill,  or  faith,  or  some  kind  of  access  to 


CHAP.  I.  THE    HEALING    MINISTRY.  135 

the  retributive  causes  punishing  the  body,  with  power 
to  abate  their  action,  and  accomplish  the  release  of  their 
victim.  Thus  also  we  find  that,  in  almost  all  the  savage 
races  of  the  world,  even  now,  the  Healer  is  their  Holy 
man,  or  Prophet,  though  in  fact  their  conjurer  only,  or 
magician.  The  Physician,  on  the  other  hand,  is  one 
who  deals  in  physic,  one  who  cures  the  disorder  of  na- 
ture, by  natural  ingredients,  working  by  their  natural 
power.  He  and  his  work,  and  his  means,  are  all  in  the 
plane  of  nature,  (Phusis)  and  hence,  from  the  days  of 
Hippocrates  downward,  and  perhaps  in  Egypt  before 
that  time,  he  is  called  a  Physician.  In  that  sense  Christ 
was  never  a  proper  physician,  for  his  cures  were  not 
wrought  by  prescription,  but  by  the  immediate  exten- 
sion, somehow,  to  the  patient,  of  a  divine,  or  super- 
natural power.  He  fulfilled,  in  this  view,  as  probably 
it  was  never  done  before,  the  true  idea  of  the  Healer. 
The  healing  processes  before  resorted  to  had  been  of  a 
mixed  nature,  more  or  less  corrupted  by  superstition  ; 
operated,  here  and  there  by  prescriptions  obtained 
through  oracles,  or  by  application  to  prophets  ;  some- 
times seconded  by  appeal  to  God,  in  prayers  and  sacri- 
fices offered  by  the  priest.  In  the  case  of  poison  from 
the  bite  of  serpents,  incantations  were  specially  resorted 
to.  Diviners  and  magicians  were  often  called  in.  If 
there  was  a  pool,  supposed  to  be  stirred  up,  at  certain 
hours,  by  an  angel,  the  waters  would  be  thought  to 
have  a  special  virtue.  Now,  at  last,  the  Healer  has 
come  who  can  heal,  and  the  true  religious  idea  of  the 
office  is  fulfilled  in  his  person. 

/  ^~ 

^L 


186  USES    AND    RELATIONS    OF  PART  IL 

Why  now  this  very  remarkable  devotion  to  the  heal- 
ing of  bodies  ?  Coming  into  the  world,  as  we  all  agree, 

His  object  in  the  f°r  en(^s  so  intensely  spiritual — to  be  a 
healing  of  bodies,  deliverer  of  souls,  and  to  become  the 
Head  of  a  universal  kingdom  gathered  in  his  own  glo- 
rious likeness  and  beatitude — why  does  he  strike  direct- 
ly into  this  low  level  of  labor,  and  concern  himself  in 
this  large  degree,  with  the  diseases  and  disabilities  of 
men's  bodies  ? 

It  is  a  very  common  answer  made  to  this  question, 
that  he  does  it  from  a  wise  consideration  of  the  advan- 
tage he  will  gain  by  it,  in  men's  prejudices,  or  the  power 
he  will  thus  obtain  over  them,  in  the  separate  matter  of 
their  spiritual  choices  and  affections.  On  the  same 
principle,  we,  it  will  be  urged,  are  to  go  directly  down 
into  the  economic  struggles  and  physical  pains  of  men, 
ministering  to  their  needs  and  the  terrible  woes  of  their 
vices,  taking  them,  in  that  manner,  at  a  wise  advan- 
tage, and  not  shoving  them  away  from  us,  by  endeavor- 
ing to  bolt  in  spiritual  lessons  upon  them,  without  any 
care  for  their  bodily  wants  and  ailments. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  of  this  as  far  as  we  are  con- 
cerned, in  our  own  human  charities.  Neither  is  there 
any  room  to  doubt,  that  Christ's  whole  ministry  and 
life  change  look,  because  of  his  healings,  and  the  very 
systematic  and  tender  care  he  has  of  men's  bodies. 
Omitting  these,  or  conceiving  these  very  practical  mer- 
cies never  to  have  been  shown,  his  teachings  would  be 
only  lectures,  and  the  whole  work  of  his  ministry,  com- 
paratively speaking,  flashy  and  thin.  Every  thing 


CHAP.  I.  THE    HEALING    MINISTRY.  137 

now  is  in  a  robust  and  rounded  figure,  just  because 
these  practical  works  in  bodies  keep  away  the  look  of 
theory  and-  Targum,  giving  us  a  Saviour  to  worship 
and  not  a  Rabbi  to  hear. 

But  that  Christ  really  put  himself  to  his  works  of 
healing  for  this  purpose,  we  shall  not  be  satisfied,  after 
all,  to  believe.  He  has  too  much  heart  in  His  incarnation 
these  works,  to  permit  a  thought  that  he  £ 
is  in  them  prudentially,  or  to  gain  some  bodies, 
ulterior  and  remote  advantage.  No,  there  is  a  deeper 
reason.  He  is  here  as  the  incarnate  Lord  of  the  worlds, 
and  he  could  not  even  be  thought  in  that  character,  if, 
being  flesh,  he  did  not  turn  himself  to  all  he  meets  in 
the  flesh.  And  so  much  is  there  in  this,  that  any  one 
having  deep  enough  insight  to  read  such  a  matter  be- 
forehand, would  say  that  if  the  Word  is  to  be  incarnate, 
then  he  will  assuredly  appear  to  bodies,  minister  to 
bodies,  claim  the  kindship  of  bodies,  by  a  tender  sym- 
pathy for  their  pains  and  a  healing  touch  upon  their 
diseases.  Being,  in  this  manner,  Son  of  Man,  he  is 
brought  close  to  man,  upon  his  human  level.  He  has 
come  to  be  with  him  in  that  level — touched  with  the 
feeling,  not  of  his  mental,  or  more  respectable  infirmi- 
ties, but  of  those  which  are  lowest  and  most  loathsome. 
What  could  a  fastidious  Saviour  do  here?  one  who  is 
too  delicate  and  spiritual,  to  concern  himself  with  the 
disagreeable  and  often  revolting  conditions  of  bodies? 

Besides,  he  is  here  in  God's  own  love,  and  what  shall 
that  love  grapple  with,  when  it  comes,  but  precisely 
that  which  is  deepest  in  the  consciousness  of  suffering  ? 

12* 


138  USES    AND    RELATIONS    OF  PAHT  IL 

No  matter  if  he  has  come  to  be  a  Redeemer  of  souls. 
Souls  and  bodies  are  not  so  far  apart  as  many  try  to 

Souls  and  bodies  believe.  Where  are  the  pains  of  bodies 
not  far  apart  in  felt  but  in  their  souls  ?  and  where  go 
the  disorder  and  breakage  of  souls  but 
directly  into  their  bodies  ?  How  sovereign  is  the  ac- 
tion of  souls !  how  inevitable  the  reaction  of  bodies ! 
And  how  nearly  common  are  the  fortunes  of  both! 
The  fall  of  sin  carries  down  body  and  soul  together, 
and  the  quickening  of  the  Spirit  quickens,  not  the 
soul  only,  but  the  mortal  body  with  it.  We  sometimes 
think  the  body  is  in  health,  when  the  soul  is  not ;  and 
the  soul  in  health,  when  the  body  is  not ;  but  a  great 
many  diseases  work  latently,  a  long  time,  before  they 
break  out,  and  the  returning  of  health  is  often  working 
latently,  a  long  time,  before  we  discover  it.  After  all, 
how  nearly  divine  a  thing  is  health,  be  it  in  the  soul,  or 
in  the  body  ;  and  as  the  fibres  of  both  are  intertwined, 
with  such  marvelous  cunning,  all  through,  how  shall 
either  fall  out  of  God's  order  alone,  or  come  back  into  it 
alone  ? 

The  whole  man  quivers  in  the  shock  of  sin.  The 
crystalline  order  of  soul  and  body  is  shivered  by  the 
same  .blow.  Diseases  consequent  are  nothing,  after  that, 
but  the  fact,  that  the  harmonic  condition  of  health  is 
broken — nothing  fitly  joined  together,  nothing  com- 
pacted by  what  every  joint  supplieth,  nothing  vitalized 
by  the  effectual  and  measurely  working  of  all  parts'  for 
each  other.  Why  then  should  the  Great  Healer  think 
to  pass  by  bodies,  when  he  comes  for  the  healing  of 


CIIAP.  I.  THE    HEALING    MINISTRY.  139 

souls  ?  And  as  all  men  know  it,  when  their  bodies  are 
sick,  and  are  ready  enough  to  be  healed — ignorant  mean- 
time altogether  of  the  disorder  in  their  souls,  and  want- 
ing no  help  there — why  should  not  the  Healing  Mercy 
apply  itself,  at  once,  where  it  is  wanted,  and  not  throw 
itself  away  on  souls,  in  the  attempting  of  a  benefaction 
sure,  at  first,  to  be  repelled  ? 

Furthermore,  if  we  are  to  understand  this  matter,  we 
must  carefully  observe  what  opinion  Christ  himself  had 
of  men's  diseases  and  the  bad  implications  whence  they 
come.  How  large  a  part  of  his  cures  Djscovere  in  dis 
are  wrought  on  persons  whom  foul  eases  the  virus  of 
spirits — just  nowunwontedly  "torment-  8in' 
ed"  and  stirred  up  to  a  special  activity — have  taken 
possession  of.  How  often  does  he  say,  "go  in  peace, 
thy  sins  are  forgiven  thee;"  though  perhaps  nothing 
has  been  said  of  their  sins  before,  and  possibly  nothing 
more  is  meant  than  that  they  are  cured  of  their  malady. 
To  the  simply  inoffensive  broken  invalid,  whom  he 
found  at  the  pool  of  Siloam  and  healed,  he  says — "  Sin 
no  more  lest  a  worse  thing  befall  thee."  Over  a  poor 
disabled  woman  doubled  by  disease,  he  says,  in  softest 
pity,  "  whom  Satan  has  bound  these  eighteen  years." 
In  this  manner  he  associates  disease,  even  habitually, 
with  malign  causes,  and  very  nearly  identifies  the  bur- 
den of  it  with  the  curse  and  burden  of  sin  itself.  Over 
the  young  man,  blind  from  his  birth,  he  does  indeed 
say  that  "  neither  he  nor  his  parents  have  sinned,  that 
he  was  born  blind,"  but  he  only  means  in  this  to  repel 
the  odious  and  half-superstitious  impeachment,  that  was 


140  USES    AND    RELATIONS    OF  PART  IL 

charging  the  very  special  suffering  of  the  case,  to  some 
special  criminality  in  the  house.  Had  the  impeachment 
been,  that  all  the  disabilities,  and  diseases,  and  the  gene- 
rally disordered  health  of  men's  bodies  are  due  to  the 
great  public  fact  of  sin,  and  the  retributive  causes 
loosened  by  it,  his  profoundly  accordant  conviction  is 
proved  by  his  mission  itself.  Accordingly  all  his  heal- 
ings in  bodies,  were  but  so  many  types  of  the  healing 
virtue  he  was  dispensing,  in  the  higher  nature  itself. 
Indeed  the  whole  purpose  of  his  life,  comprehensively 
taken,  was,  in  his  own  view,  to  work  a  healing  gen- 
eral of  the  subject,  a  restoration  thus  to  complete  health 
and  the  crystal  unity  of  heaven's  vital  order.  Some- 
times he  appears  to  have  operated  for  the  soul,  through 
the  body;  and  sometimes  for  the  body  through  the 
soul,  contriving  in  what  manner  to  elicit  faith  before 
the  cure  and  assuming,  evidently,  the  fact  of  a  recip- 
rocal action  and  reaction,  operating  naturally  between 
them — the  healing  of  the  body  helped  by  the  faith  of 
the  soul  and  the  faith  of  the  soul  by  the  healing  of  the 
body.  In  the  large  view,  his  operation  is  but  one,  and 
life,  complete  life,  is  or  is  to  be  the  result. 

If  now  any  one  should  ask  what  is  the  particular  im- 
port, or  importance,  of  this  healing  work  of  Christ  in 
bodies,  that  it  should  even  occupy  a 

liis  healings  in- 
compatible    with   chapter  in  the  doctrine  of  his  sacrifice, 
penal  substitution.    the  yery  gimple  an(j  gufficient  answer  iS) 

that  it  is  a  matter  quite  decisive,  in  respect  to  the  nature 
of  that  substitutive  office,  which  Christ  undertook  to 
fulfill.  If  we  want  to  know  in  what  sense,  or  manner, 


CHAP.  I.  THE    HEALING    MINISTRY.  141 

he  suffered  for  the  sins  of  mankind,  his  immense  expen- 
diture of  toil,  and  feeling,  and  disgustful  sympathy,  and 
the  murderous  jealousy  to  be  encountered  in  healing  the 
diseases  of  mankind,  will  furnish  the  exact  explanation 
required.  Indeed,  if  he  came  simply  to  be  the  mani- 
fested love  of  God,  and  to  be  lifted  up  as  the  brazen 
serpent  in  the  wilderness,  for  the  healing  of  guilty  souls, 
nothing  could  be  more  natural,  in  that  love,  having 
that  sublime  healing  purpose  in  view,  than  that  he 
should  go  directly  into  the  healing  of  bodies,  in  the 
manner  described  by  the  evangelists.  But  if  he.  came 
to  satisfy  God's  justice,  or  pacify  God's  wrath  against 
sin,  so  to  prepare  a  ground  of  forgiveness  for  sin,  there 
is  a  very  palpable  two-fold  incongruity  between  his 
healings  and  such  a  work.  First,  between  offering 
mere  pain,  or  suffering  to  God,  and  a  general  operation 
of  body-cure  on  mankind,  there  is  no  more  real  agree- 
ment, or  consent  of  meaning,  than  between  doing  the 
same  and  building  a  college,  or  endowing  a  school  of 
surgery.  And  secondly,  since  all  diseases  are  but 
issues  of  penal  consequence,  under  the  retributive  laws 
God  has  incorporated  in  our  human  nature  for  the  re- 
dress of  our  sin,  what  is  Christ  doing,  in  his  mighty 
works  of  healing,  but  simply  blocking,  or  defeating  the 
ordinances  of  justice,  whose  wrath  he  has  come  to  sat- 
isfy, and  whose  rule  to  propitiate?  The  disagreement 
is  radical  and  total,  between  being  man's  substitute 
under  God's  penalties  maintained,  and  being  man's 
Healer  under  the  same  discontinued,  or  pushed  by. 
The  question  how  shall  two  walk  together  unless  they 


142  USEd    AND    RELATIONS    OF  PART  II 

be  agreed?  was  never  more  apposite.  The  inference 
indeed  is  absolute,  one  way  or  the  other,  either  that 
Christ  engaged  in  no  such  work  of  healing,  or  that  he 
came  to  fulfill  no  such  office  of  suffering. 

Meantime,  the  agreement  between  his  healing  minis- 
try and  the  kind  of  vicarious  action  I  have  ascribed  to 

Gloriously  com-  him  is  complete.     Nay,  he  could  not 

patibie  with   the   come  into  the  world,  in  that  office,  with- 

11 8*      out  undertaking  one  kind  of  ministry  as 

naturally  as  the  other ;  or,  in  fact,  without  feeling  both 

to  be  one. 

In  this  connection,  therefore,  that  very  important  text 
which  we  have  already  cited  comes  back  upon  us,  to 
magnify  still  farther  its  almost  imperial  authority — 
"  That  it  might  be  fulfilled  which  was  spoken  by  Esaias 
the  prophet,  saying,  '  Himself  took  our  infirmities  and 
bare  our  sicknesses.' "  Here  is  a  passage  quoted  directly 
from  that  stock-fund  chapter  of  vicarious  language, 
the  liii  of  Isaiah.  The  New  Testament  expression, 
"  took  our  infirmities  and  bare  our  sicknesses,"  repre- 
sents "  hath  borne  our  griefs  and  carried  our  sorrows," 
in  that  chapter ;  where  immediately  follow  words  like 
these — "  Yet  we  did  esteem  him  stricken,  smitten  of 
God  and  afflicted.  But  he  was  wounded  for  our  trans- 
gressions, he  was  bruised  for  our  iniquities ;  the  chas- 
tisement of  our  peace  was  upon  him,  and  with  his 
stripes  we  are  healed." 

Now  it  will  be  seen  that,  in  this  passage,  we  have  the 
stiffest  looking  terms  of  penal  substitution  any  where 
to  be  found,  and  yet  that  we  have  also  a  clause  at  the 


CHAP.  I.  THE    HEALING    MINISTRY.  143 

beginning,  and  a  clause  at  the  end,  determining  the 
usus  loquendi  of  all  these  terms,  and  showing,  beyond  a 
question,  that  their  meaning  is  exhausted  by  the 
labors,  and  suffering  sympathies,  and  wrongs  of  bitter 
violence  Christ  endured,  as  the  bodily  and  spiritual 
Healer  of  mankind.  For  when  it  is  said,  "he  hath 
borne  our  griefs  and  carried  our  sorrows,"  it  is  no  more 
possible  to  understand  that  he  is  literally  substituted  in 
our  griefs  and  sorrows ;  for  the  language  has  been  ap- 
plied to  Christ's  healings,  and  is  even  declared  to  be 
fulfilled  in  the  fact,  that  he  there  "  took  our  infirmities 
and  bare  our  sicknesses."  For  he  took  them  not  liter- 
ally upon  him,  but  only  assumed  them  to  bear  in  a  way 
of  pains-taking  labor,  and  exhaustive  sympathy,  and 
disgustful  attention,  coupled  with  much  abuse  and  little 
gratitude.  And  then  again,  when  he  is  said,  in  so 
many  strong  terms,  to  have  been  wounded  and  bruised 
for  us,  put  in  chastisement  and  stripes,  how  suddenly 
and  even  totally  does  the  substitution  change  look, 
when  the  terminal  aim,  or  end,  or  idea  appears.  The 
wounding  and  bruising,  the  chastisement  and  stripes,  do 
not  bring  us  out  as  we  should  expect,  on  the  satisfaction 
of  God's  justice,  but  we  read,  instead — "  with  his  stripes 
we  are  healed  ;"  or,  as  in  Peter's  version — "by  whose 
stripes  ye  were  healed."  And  so,  taking  all  Christ's 
ministry,  from  his  beginning  to  the  hour  of  his  death,  it 
turns  out  that  he  is  in  a  grand  work  of  healing  for 
body  and  soul,  charging  on  his  burdened  feeling  all  our 
sicknesses  and  pains,  all  the  disorder  of  our  transgres- 
sions and  sins,  weary,  disgustful,  deep  in  sorrow,  cir 


144  USES    AND    RELATIONS    OF  PART  II. 

cum  vented,  hated,  persecuted  and  smitten,  as  it  were, 
of  God,  yet  persisting  even  unto  death  ;  and  all  this  for 
our  peace,  or,  what  is  nowise  different,  for  our  healing, 
or  complete  health.  What  a  profound  reality,  and 
depth,  and  rationality,  is  there  in  such  a  vicariousness ! 
Nobody  is  offended  by  it,  and  where  is  the  heart  it  will 
not  soften  ?  Health,  too,  this  divine  health !  typified 
by  the  cooling  of  so  many  fevers,  the  seeing  of  so  many 
blind  eyes,  the  leaping  of  so  many  crippled  limbs,  the 
leprous  skin  blushing  into  color,  the  weakness  bounding 
into  pulse,  the  tingling  of  new  life  where  life  was  ebbing 
low,  and,  above  all,  the  sense  harmonically  tuned  to 
wind,  and  sky,  and  weather — take  all  this  for  sign, 
without,  of  that  sublimer  healing  in  the  soul's  disorders 
within,  following  it  upward  into  the  state  of  complete 
life,  and  purity,  and  harmony  with  God,  how  great  a 
matter  is  it,  and  how  fit  to  occupy  the  burdened  heart, 
the  crucified  fidelity,  and  all  the  suffering  years  of  the 
Son  of  God !  Is  there  any  substitution  worthier  to  be 
borne  by  him,  or  more  to  be  admired,  and  glorified  by  us  ? 

In  this  general  view,  it  is  hardly  possible  to  over- 
magnify  the  importance  of  Christ's  healings,  taken  in 
Practical  value      their  spiritual  uses,  and  their  connec- 
of  these  analogies.   tjons  ^[fa  ^Q  preaching  of  his  gospel 

afterwards.  In  them  are  provided  the  finest  and  most 
quickening  analogies ;  so  that  every  story  of  healing 
is,  in  fact,  a  sermon,  yielding  its  own  particular  lesson 
of  prayer  and  importunity,  of  holy  conviction,  of  divine 
sympathy  and  strength-giving,  of  trust,  of  cooperative 


CHAP.  I.  THE    HEALING    MINISTRY.  145 

action,  of  public  confession  and  devoted  following. 
When  rightly  handled,  there  is  a  wonderful  felicity  in 
such  lessons.  No  logical  processes,  or  refinements  are 
wanted  to  set  them  forth.  They  make  their  address  di- 
rectly to  the  sentiments,  and  get  themselves  interpreted 
by  the  practical  wants  and  troubles  of  experience.  Sin, 
too,  is  so  very  like  to  disease  and  so  closely  yoked  with 
it,  that  it  takes  to  itself,  with  quick  facility,  whatever  is 
said,  or  done,  for  disease.  Talking  of  blindness  the 
sinner  scarcely  counts  it  a  figure  to  say  that  his  soul 
is  blind.  The  being  held  by  demons  gets,  Low  often,  a 
ready  interpretation  from  the  terrible  storms  of  the 
mind,  and  the  unsubduable  fires  of  hate  and  demonized 
passion !  How  easily,  too,  will  the  soul  that  is  shamed 
and  utterly  broken,  by  guilty  and  remorseful  convic- 
tions, take  every  thing  said  and  done  for  a  poor  leper, 
as  being  wonderfully  true  for  it !  The  healings,  in  this 
view,  belong  to  the  very  staple  matter  of  the  gospel. 
Without  them,  it  would  be  a  soul  without  a  body ;  for 
a  gospel  wants  a  body,  as  truly  as  a  man,  or  a  seed ; 
and,  as  every  seed  hath  its  own  body,  so  the  outward 
facts  of  Christ's  healings  are  the  very  particular  and 
proper  body,  of  the  mightier  and  diviner  healings  he 
has  undertaken  to  work  in  character  and  the  inner  man 
of  the  spirit. 

Besides,  it  is  another  very  important  office  of  these 
works  on  the  body,  that  they  emphasize  the  whole  man- 
ner and  working  of  Christ.  We  want,  as  sinners,  a 
supernatural  salvation  if  any,  one  that  has  power  to 
turn  back  all  the  currents  and  causalities  of  retribu- 

13 


146  USES   AND    RELATIONS    OF  PART  II. 

tive  disorder  in  our  sin.     We  are  under  sin,  and  a  power 

is   wanted  that  can  draw  us  out  and  bring  us  clear 

,    of  it.     How  much  then  does  it  signify 

Types  nnd  proofs  * 

of  a  supernatural  that  our  Saviour  was  a  Healer.  Going 
along  with  him  in  his  ministry,  and 
seeing  how  he  works ;  always  competent  to  the  thing  he 
undertakes,  unsealing  eyes  born  blind,  banishing  foul 
spirits,  commanding  the  white  skin  of  lepers  to  redden 
into  health,  hearing  every  forlorn  sufferer's  prayer,  una- 
ble to  be  even  touched  in  the  hem  of  his  garment  with- 
out sending  out  some  healing  virtue ;  we  have  the  feel- 
ing produced  that  we,  too,  can  be  healed,  that  the  grip 
of  retribution  fastened  upon  us  by  our  sin,  all  the  bad 
causalities  of  our  inward  disorder,  can  be  loosened.  In 
the  salvation  offered  us,  there  is  a  look  of  capacity ;  we 
feel  that  God  is  in  our  case,  able  to  undertake,  and 
carry,  and  complete,  the  work  of  our  deliverance — able 
to  save  unto  the  uttermost.  In  this  profoundly  neces- 
sary impression,  the  other  miracles  also  concur;  but  if 
these  mighty  works  had  not  been  wrought,  nothing 
else  that  Christ  could  have  done,  in  the  sphere  of  truth 
and  the  spirit,  would  have  had  the  necessary  energy 
of  a  gospel.  Not  even  his  cross  would  have  signified 
much  beyond  the  proof  of  his  weakness.  It  is  only 
when  the  GREAT  HEALER  dies,  that  we  look  to  find  his 
cross  a  deed  of  power. 

After  what  was  said,  in  the  next  previous  chapter,  of 
the  recovery  of  men  to  a  participation  with  Christ  in 
his  sacrifice,  it  may  occur  to  some  one  to  ask,  whether 


CHAP.  I.  THE    HEALING    MINISTRY.  147 

it  can  be  imagined,  that  his  healings  are  to  be  thus  partic- 
ipated ?  To  which  I  answer  that,  in  some  very  import- 
an  degree,  they  probably  are.  And 

Partaking  in  the 

here  I  will  say  nothing  of  the  gift  of  sacrifice,  shall  we 
healing,  "so-called,  which  many  are  quite  flso  in  the  heij- 
positive  is  discontinued — showing  still 
no  Scripture  for  the  fact ;  for  if  it  were  in  still  undisputed 
exercise,  it  would  pertain  only  to  such  as  are  put  in  the 
gift,  and  not  to  the  general  condition  of  discipleship.  We 
are  looking  here  for  that  only  in  which  the  followers  of 
their  Master  are  to  follow ;  that  which  belongs  to  their 
unity  of  spirit  and  object  with  him.  Here  we  find 
them  called  to  look  on  the  things  of  others,  even  as 
he  did,  and  to  have  the  same  mind  with  him  in  his 
condescension  to  the  broken  lot  of  mankind.  And  this 
includes,  of  course,  a  large,  and  full,  and  free  sympathy 
with  all  suffering ;  a  capacity  of  being  burdened  for  the 
sick,  and  sometimes  a  necessary,  knowing  consent  to 
exposure  from  contagious  maladies,  that  involves  the 
greatest  peril  to  life.  The  ministry  of  love — no  Chris- 
tian can  withhold  himself  from  this,  whether  it  relate  to 
mind,  or  body,  or  sin,  or  sickness.  Hence  the  expecta- 
tion, apart  from  any  gift  of  healing,  that  all  disciples, 
in  all  grades  and  positions,  will  have  their  prayers  bur- 
dened heavily,  often,  for  the  sick,  and  will  sometimes 
prevail  before  God  in  suit  for  their  recovery — this  apart 
from  any  thought  of  miracle,  and  by  virtue  of  the 
merely  Christian  efficacy  of  prayer,  as  affirmed  by  the 
doctrine  of  prayer  itself.  • 

Hence  that  remarkable  passage  in  the  close  of  the 


148  USES    AND    RELATIONS    OF  PART  II. 

epistle  of  James,  affirming  the  efficacy  of  prayer  for  the 
sick,  and  by  the  interjection  of  some  vicarious  image, 
or  term,  in  almost  every  verse,  giving  it  the  very  cast 
of  the  Christly  sacrifice.  It  opens  by  permitting  every 
sick  person  to  send  for  the  elders  of  the  church,  and 
laying  it  on  them,  as  a  charge  belonging  to  their  office, 
to  pray  over  the  sick,  and  help  their  own  faith  in  doing 
it,  by  the  ancient  solemnity  of  a  ritual  anointing. 
Then  it  passes  on  to  what  is  more  general,  belonging,'  not 
to  church  officers,  but  to  the  common  efficacy  of  prayer 
itself;  where  the  declaration  is,  that  "  the  prayer  of  faith 
shall  save  the  sick ;"  that  the  Lord — not  the  disciple — will 
raise  him  up,  and  that  his  sins  shall  be  forgiven  him,  as 
they  were  forgiven  by  Christ  in  his  healings.  It  will 
not  be  understood,  of  course,  that  the  prayer  of  faith  is 
pledged  to  restore  all  sick,  but  only  that  it  will  restore 
as  many  sick  as  can  have  the  prayer  of  faith  given,  or 
allowed ;  for  God  will  not  help  any  one  to  pray  in  faith 
for  such  as  he  will  not  restore.  In  the  next  verse,  the 
subject  is  enlarged,  and  all  Christian  friends  are  put  in  a 
kind  of  vicarious  relation  to  each  other,  in  respect  to 
their  faults  and  maladies  of  soul.  "  Confess  your  faults 
one  to  another" — ask  sympathy,  that  is,  in  a  free  state- 
ment of  your  inward  troubles — "  and  pray  for  one  an- 
other that  ye  may  be  healed ;"  as  if  the  matter  wanted 
were  a  cure  of  inbred  disorder.  Then  follows  an 
appeal  to  the  example,  or  instance  of  Elijah's  prayers ; 
and  the  matter  is  put  in  a  form  to  cut  off  forever  the 
idea  that  such  kind  of  prayer  is,  or  ever  can  be,  anti- 
quated ;  for  Elijah's  prayers  we  are  told  were  not  spe- 


CHAP.  I.  THE    HEALING    MINISTRY.  149 

cially  a  prophet's,  or  an  angel's,  but  only  a  man's,  and 
that  "  man  subject  to  like  passions  as  we  are  " — -just  as 
weak,  and  cloudy,  and  hard  of  faith  as  a  proper  human 
creature  will  be.  Finally  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  the 
care  every  brother  will  have  for  every  brother,  when 
he  falls ;  how  he  will  fly  to  the  rescue,  and  turn  him 
back,  and  be  a  Saviour  to  him,  like  his  Master,  only  in 
a  lower,  less  complete  sense,  proper  to  his  own  human 
weakness.  Have  it  as  a  fact  always  in  your  feeling,  he 
says,  that  "  he  which  converteth  a  sinner  [that  is,  a  fallen 
brother]  from  the  error  of  his  way  shall  save  a  soul 
from  death  and  hide  a  multitude  of  sins."  It  is  all 
along  we  shall  perceive,  in  this  passage,  as  if  the  Mas- 
ter were  calling  the  disciple  to  have  a  close,  dear  part 
with  him,  in  his  healing  and  saving  work.  And,  what 
is  most  of  all  impressive,  he  gives  in  that  word  "  hide" 
a  part  with  him,  so  to  speak,  in  his  very  work  of  recon- 
ciliation. The  Old  Testament  word  translated  atone- 
ment, reconciliation,  literally  means  to  hide,  or  cover — 
"  Thou  hast  covered  all  their  sin  " — "  Blessed  are  they 
whose  iniquities  are  forgiven  and  whose  sins  are  cov- 
ered." As  the  Master  has  this  power,  and  stands  in 
this  high  honor,  so  the  follower  shall  follow,  and  shall 
even  hope,  when  he  pities  the  fall  of  his  brother,  and 
prays  him  back,  with  many  tears  and  tender  watchings 
thereunto,  that  he  also  may  be  the  minister  of  healing 
and  a  justifying  peace,  and  may  hide  a  multitude  of 
sins. 

Speaking  thus  of  prayer  and  of  works  by  prayer  ac- 
complished, not  to  put  down,  in  connection,  the  remark- 

13* 


150  USES    AND    RELATIONS    OF,    ETC.     PART  II. 

able  promise  of  Christ,  so  often  debated,  and  so  difficult, 
as  many  think,  to  be  rationally  qualified,  might  even  be 
a  criminal  omission — "  Yerily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you, 
He  that  believeth  on  me  the  works  that  I  do  shall  he  do 
also,  and  greater  works  than  these  shall  he  do,  because 
I  go  unto  my  Father.  And  whatsoever  ye  shall  ask,  in 
my  name,  that  will  I  do,  that  the  Father  may  be  glori- 
fied in  the  Son.  If  ye  shall  ask  any  thing  in  my  name 
I  will  do  it."  This  huge  over-promise  of  the  Saviour 
— what  shall  we  make  of  it?  how,  and  how  far,  shall 
we  qualify  it? 


CHAPTER  II. 

CHRIST'S  OBJECT  is  THE  HEALING  OF  SOULS. 

THE  healings  of  Christ  in  bodies,  we  have  just  seen, 
are  in  fact  an  outward  type  of  the  more  radical  and 
sublime  cure  he  undertakes,  by  his  sacrifice,  to  work  in 
fallen  character.  In  this  cure,  we  have  the  principal 
aim  and  object  of  his  mission.  We  may  sum  up  thus 
all  that  he  taught,  and  did,  and  suffered,  in  the  industry 
of  his  life  and  the  pangs  of  his  cross,  and  say  that  the 
one,  comprehensive,  all-inclusive  aim,  that  draws  him 
on,  is  the  change  he  will  operate  in  the  spiritual  habit 
and  future  well-being  of  souls.  In  this  fact  it  is,  and 
only  in  this,  that  he  becomes  a  Redeemer.  He  is  here 
in  vicarious  sacrifice,  not  for  something  else,  but  for 
this. 

In  the  unfolding  of  this  general  conception,  my  pres- 
ent chapter  will  be  occupied.  It  is  very  commonly  as- 
sumed that  Christ  is  here  for  another  and  different  main 
object;  viz.,  to  suffer  before  God's  justice,  and  prepare, 
in  the  satisfying  of  that,  a  way  of  possible  forgiveness 
for  men.  From  this  I  must  dissent,  though  without 
proposing  here  any  controversy,  farther  than  may  be 
implied  in  the  maintenance  and  due  illustration  of  my 


152  CHRIST'S  OBJECT  PARTII. 

proposition  above  stated.  What  was  necessary  to  be 
done  for  the  preparation  of  forgiveness  will  be  con- 
sidered, at  a  more  advanced  stage  of  the  discussion. 
I  only  say,  for  the  present,  that  this  is  no  principal  mat- 
ter in  his  work,  the  principal  matter  being  to  inaugu- 
rate a  grand,  restorative,  new-creating  movement  on 
character — the  reconciliation,  that  is,  of  men  to  God. 
The  other,  the  preparation  of  forgiveness,  take  what 
view  of  it  we  may,  unless  we  make  forgiveness  the 
same  thing  as  reconciliation,  can  be  only  a  secondary 
and  subordinate  matter,  the  principal  work  and  wonder 
of  all  being  what  Christ  undertakes  and  is  able  to  do, 
in  the  bad  mind's  healing  and  recovery  to  God. 

That  some  very  great  and  wonderful  change,  or  re- 
casting of  soul  is,  in  some  way,  necessary — as  well  as  to 

Christ  is  our  Ke-  Pr°vide  the  forgiveness  of  sins — is  gen- 
generator,  erally  admitted  and  asserted  with  abun- 
dant emphasis  ;  but  it  is  not  as  generally  perceived  that 
Christ  has  any  particular  agency  in  it.  It  is  not  denied 
that  his  teachings  have  great  value,  or  that  what  is 
called  his  expiatory  suffering  for  sin  is  effective  in  a 
degree,  on  men's  feeling,  as  well  as  efficacious  in  the 
satisfaction  of  justice;  and  it  is  continually  put  to  his 
credit,  in  this  same  suffering  and  satisfaction,  that  he 
has  purchased  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  sends  him  forth  to 
work  the  needed  change  in  souls.  In  this  way,  some 
compensation  is  made  for  the  loss  that  accrues  by  a  fail- 
ure to  conceive  the  immediate  and  really  immense 
agency  of  Christ  in  such  changes ;  still  there  is  a  loss. 
No  conception  of  Christ  really  meets  the  true  signifi- 


IS    THE    HEALING    OF    SOULS.  153 

cance  of  his  mission,  that  does  not  find  him  working 
centrally  in  the  great  Soul-Healing  himself;  related 
presently  to  it,  in  all  the  matter  of  his  suffering  and 
sacrifice.  It  is  not  his  simply  to  forgive,  or  obtain 
the  forgiveness  of  sin,  in  the  lowest  and  most  nearly 
negative  sense  of  remission ;  his  great  and  vastly 
more  significant  endeavor  is,  to  make  the  sin  itself  let 
go  of  the  sinner,  and  so  deliver  him  inwardly  that 
he  shall  be  clear  of  it.  And  to  accomplish  this 
requires  an  almost  recomposition  of  the  man;  the 
removal  of  all  his  breakage,  and  disorder,  and  derange- 
ment, and  the  crystalization  over  again,  if  I  may  so 
speak,  of  all  his  shattered  affinities,  in  God's  own  har-  , 
mony  and  law.  And,  in  order  to  this  result,  whatever  .  • 
agencies  beside  concur  in  it,  three  things,  included  "  . 
in  the  sacrifice  and  suffering  of  Jesus,  appear  to  be  spe- 
cially needed. 

1.  There  is  a  want  of  something  done,  or  shown,  to 
preengage  the  feeling,  or  raise  a  favoring  prejudice  in  it; 
so  that,  when  advance  is  made,  on  God's  pre-engages  the 
part,  in  a  call  to  repentance,  the  subject  feelins- 
may  not  be  repelled,  but  drawn  rather.  Otherwise  it  is 
like  to  be  as  it  was  in  the  garden,  when  the  culprit  hear- 
ing God  calling  after  him,  fled  and  hid  himself.  No 
bad  soul  likes  to  meet  the  Holy  one,  but  recoils  pain- 
fully, shivers  with  dread,  and  turns  away.  But  the 
foremost  thing  we  see  in  Christ  is  not  the  infinite  holi- 
ness, or  sovereign  purity;  he  takes  us,  first,  on  the 
side  of  bur  natural  feeling;  showing  his  compassions 
there,  passing  before  us  visaged  in  sorrow,  groaning  in 


154 

distressful  concern  for  us,  dying  even  the  bitterest  con- 
ceivable death,  because  the  love  he  bears  to  us  can  not 
let  go  of  us.  In  a  word  we  see  him  entered  so  deeply 
into  our  lot,  that  we  are  softened  and  drawn  by  him, 
and  even  begin  to  want  him  entered  more  deeply,  that 
we  may  feel  him  more  constrainingly.  In  this  way  a 
great  point  is  turned  in  our  recovery.  Our  heart  is 
engaged  before  it  is  broken.  We  like  the  Friend  before 
we  love  the  Saviour. 

2.  It  is  another  point  of  consequence,  in  the  matter 
of  our  recovery,  that  we  have  some  better,  more  tender, 
and  so  more  piercing,  conviction  of  sin,  than  we  get 
from  our  natural  remorse,  or  even  from  the  rugged 
Awakens  the  an^  blunt  sentence  of  law.  It  is  well, 
conscience.  indeed,  to  be  shot  through  with  fiery 
bolts  from  Sinai,  but  these  hard,  dry  wounds,  these  lac- 
erations of  truth,  want  searching  and  wounding  over 
again,  by  the  gentle  surgery  of  love,  before  we  are  in  a 
way  to  be  healed.  In  this  more  subduing,  and  more 
nearly  irresistible  convincing,  we  have,  in  part,  the 
peculiar  efficacy  of  the  cross.  We  look  on  him  whom 
we  have  pierced,  and  are  pierced  ourselves.  Through 
the  mighty  bosom  struggle  of  the  agony  and  death, 
we  look  down,  softened,  into  the  bosorn  wars  and  woes 
Christ  pities  and  dies  for  in  us.  And  when  we  hear 
him  say — "  Of  sin  because  ye  believe  not  on  me" — we 
are  not  chilled,  or  repelled,  as  by  the  icy  baptism  of 
fear  and  remorse,  but  we  welcome  the  pain.  As  Simeon 
himself  declared,  "  he  is  set  for  the  fall,"  as  well  as  "for 
the  rising  again;"  and  we  even  bless  the  fall  that  so  ten- 
derly prepares  the  rising. 


OHAP.  II.        IS    THE    HEALING    OF    SOULS.  155 

In  this  manner  it  was,  that  the  conversion  of  Paul 
began  at  the  point  of  that  piercing  word — "  I  am  Jesus 
of  Nazareth,  whom  thou  persecutest."  Penetrated  and 
felled  by  that  arrow  of  the  divine  love,  his  "exceed- 
ingly mad "  feeling  dies,  and  his  resistance,  from  that 
moment,  is  gone. 

3.  There  greatly  needs  to  be,  and  therefore,  in  Christ, 
is  given,  a  type  of  the  new  feeling  and  life  to  be  re- 
stored. Abstract  descriptions  given  of  holiness  or  holy 
virtue,  do  not  signify  much  to  those  who  Stands  for  the 
never  knew  them  inwardly  by  their  exemplar, 
effects.  To  conceive  a  really  divine  character  by 
specification,  or  receive  it  by  inventory  is,  in  fact, 
impossible.  No  language  can  give  the  specification,  and 
no  mind  could  take  the  meaning  of  it  accurately,  if 
it  were  given.  Hence  the  necessity  that  we  have  some 
exposition  that  is  practical  and  personal.  We  want  no 
theologic  definition  of  God's  perfections ;  but  we  want 
a  friend,  whom  we  can  feel  as  a  man,  and  whom  it  will 
be  sufficiently  accurate  for  us  to  accept  and  love.  Let 
him  come  so  nigh,  if  possible,  let  him  be  so  deeply  in- 
serted into  our  lot  and  our  feeling,  that  we  can  bury 
ourselves  in  him  and  the  fortunes  of  his  burdened  life, 
and  then  it  will  be  wonderful,  if  having  God's  own 
type  in  his  life,  we  do  not  catch  the  true  impress  from 
it  in  ourselves. 

In  these  three  points,  we  perceive,  that  the  suffering 
life  and  death  of  Jesus  are  the  appropriate  and  even  nec- 
essary equipment  of  his  doing  force,  in  what  he  under- 


156  CHRIST'S  OBJECT  PARTIL 

takes  for  character.     Observe   now  what   this   doing 
includes,    and    in   how   many   ways  and  forms  it   is 

The  Scriptures   set    forth'      Thus    he    quickens—  "  and 
moke  him  a  re-  you  hath  he  quickened."     He  gives  life  — 

newing  power. 


liberates  the  bondage  of  souls  —  "  If  the  Son  shall  make 
you  free."  He  new-creates  —  "new-created  in  Christ 
Jesus."  He  begets  —  "  hath  begotten  us  again  to  a 
lively  hope."  He  raises  from  the  state  of  spiritual 
death  —  "  and  hath  raised  us  up  together."  He  converts 
—  "  turning  away  every  one  of  you  from  his  iniquities." 
He  is  the  captain,  or  bringer  on,  of  salvation  —  "  bring- 
ing many  sons  unto  glory."  He  reconciles,  or  changes 
to  conformity  of  life  with  God  —  "  to  wit  that  God  was 
in  Christ  reconciling  the  world  unto  himself."  He  re- 
deems —  "  made  unto  us  redemption."  In  the  same  way 
he  is  called  "  the  light  of  the  world,"  "  the  day-star," 
"  the  truth,"  "  the  water  of  life,"  "  the  bread  of  life," 
the  mirror  of  God's  glory,  before  which  "  we  are 
changed  from  glory  to  glory."  In  short  there  is  no  end 
to  the  images  that  spring  up,  at  every  turn  of  the  New 
Testament  writings,  to  express  the  operative  purpose 
and  manner  of  Christ's  soul  -renewing  work  —  present- 
ing it  continually  as  the  something  he  is  doing  upon  us, 
or  to  revolutionize  and  restore  our  character.  This 
would  be  more  impressively  shown,  if  we  could  pause 
on'  all  these  various  expressions,  such  as  I  have  briefly 
cited  by  catch  words,  and  unfold  them  by  a  deliberate 
exposition  of  their  meaning. 

But  instead  of  this,  I  will  recall,  in  this  manner,  a 


CHAP.  II.        IS    THE    HEALING    OF    SOULS.  157 

single  expression,  or  figure,  as  directly  referred  to  him 
as  any  of  the  others,  and  commonly  overlooked  as  hav- 
ing any  such  reference  at  all — the  figure  I  mean  of 
birth,  or  regeneration.  It  is  even  commonly  taught 
that  Christ  is  not  immediately  concerned  in  the  change 
called  regeneration,  but  only  in  the  preparation  of  for- 
giveness for  it,  when  the  change  is  wrought  by  the 
Holy  Spirit,  in  the  office  that  belongs  to  him.  "What 
then  signify  such  examples  as  these  ?  "  But  as  many  as 
received  him  [Christ]  to  them  gave  he  power  to  become 
the  sons  of  God,  even  to  them  that  believe  in  his  name ; 
which  were  born,  not  of  blood,  nor  of  the  will  of  the 
flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God  "  [i.  e.  of  God 
as  in  Christ.]  Again — "Every  one  that  doeth  righteous- 
ness is  born  of  him,"  [Christ.]  And  again — "Being 
born  again,  not  of  corruptible  seed,  but  of  incorruptible, 
by  the  Word  of  God,  [the  Logos]  that  liveth  and  abideth 
forever." 

This  matter  of  regeneration  is  referred  also  to  the 
Holy  Spirit,  it  is  true ;  but  not  in  any  such  exclusive 
sense  that  it  is  not  referred  with  equal  „ 

None  the  less  a 

truth  to  Christ ;  for  it  is  even  declared  to  Regenerator  that 
be  the  office  of  the  Spirit  to  glorify  Christ  the  Spirit  is  also' 
in  the  soul.  Christ  is  a  power  to  the  soul  before  its 
thought,  and  by  that  which  is  given  to  thought  in  his 
person.  The  Spirit  is  a  power  back  of  thought,  open- 
ing thought  as  a  receptivity  towards  him,  and,  in  tfiat 
manner,  setting  the  subject  under  the  impression  of 
Christ's  life,  and  death,  and  character.  "  He  shall  glo- 
rify me,"  says  the  Saviour,  "for  he  shall  receive  of 

14 


158  CHRIST'S  OBJECT  PARTII. 

mine,  and  shall  show  it  unto  you."  In  Paul's  view, 
conversion  is  to  be  described  accordingly  as  the  inward 
discovery  of  Christ.  "  When  it  pleased  God/'  he  says, 
•"  to  reveal  his  Son  in  me,"  giving  that  as  the  account  of 
his  conversion.  Christ  then  is,  or  is  to  be,  an  operative 
power  on  men,  in  the  sense  that  they  are  to  be  regene- 
rated in  holiness  by  him.  In  a  remoter  and  equally 
true  sense,  they  are  regenerated  by  the  Spirit;  in  a 
closer  and  more  proximate  sense  by  Christ,  as  the  moral 
image  and  love  of  God,  set  forth  to  engage  their  love 
and  renew  them  in  character.  The  work  required  is  no 
such  work  as  can  be  summarily  struck  out,  by  the  mere 
efficiency,  or  force-principle  of  God.  It  requires  all 
there  is  of  God,  in  the  incarnate  life  of  Jesus,  in  his 
feeling,  in  his  Gethsemane,  in  his  death  ;  ^brooding  of 
the  whole  deific  mercy,  and  truth,  and  patience,  and 
holiness,  over  the  inthrallment  and  death-like  chill  of 
the  soul.  Even  as  Paul  testifies  again  —  "  But  ye  are 
washed,  but  ye  are  sanctified,  but  ye  are  justified  in  the 
name  of  the  Lord  Jesus  and  by  the  Spirit  of  our  God. 
Such  is  the  kind  of  efficacy  which  the  Scriptures  at- 
tribute to  Christ,  and  for  this  kind  of  efficacy  in  human 
character  they  conceive  him  to  be  sent  into  the  world. 
And,  by  this  kind  of  efficacy,  too,  we  shall  see  that  he 


The   Christed  m  tne  consciousness  of  his 

consciousness  in  disciples.  It  is  not  the  account  of  their 
Christian  experience,  and  of  the  gospel  as 
related  thereto,  that  Christ  has  done  something  before 
God's  throne,  and  wholly  apart  from  all  effect  in  them, 
to  make  their  acceptance  possible  ;  and  then  that  the 


CHAP.  II.        is    THE    HEALIN&    OF    SOULS.  159 

Holy  Spirit,  by  a  divine  efficiency  in  them,  changes 
their  hearts.  No  such  theologic  gospel  of  dry  wood 
and  hay  is  the  gospel  of  the  apostles.  They  find  every 
thing,  in  their  human  nature,  penetrated  by  the  sense, 
and  savor,  and  beauty,  and  glory  of  Christ.  Their 
whole  consciousness  is  a  Christ-consciousness — every 
thing  good  and  strong  in  them  is  Christ  within. 
Worsted  in  all  their  struggles  of  will-work  and  self-re- 
generation, they  still  chant  their  liberty  in  Christ  and 
say — "  For  the  law  of  the  Spirit  of  life  in  Christ  Jesus 
hath  made  me  free."  Their  joy  is  to  be  consciously 
Christed,  fully  possessed  by  Christ ;  to  have  him  dwell 
in  them,  and  spread  himself  over  and  through  all  the 
senses  and  sentiments,  and  willings,  and  works  of 
their  life. 

This  is  Paul,  for  example,  a  man  transformed,  all 
through,  by  Christ  living  in  him ;  consciously  weak  and 
little  and  low  in  himself,  and  possible  to  be  lifted  only 
in  the  hope  that,  as  Christ  hath  risen  from  the  dead,  he 
may  also  rise  with  him,  to  walk  in  newness  of  life. 
Not  that  he  was  captivated  simply  by  his  life.  He  was 
even  more  profoundly  captivated  by  his  death,  and 
found,  in  fact,  his  deepest  inspirations  there ;  desiring 
ever  to  be  with  him  in  the  fellowship  of  his  sufferings, 
and  to  be  made  conformable  to  his  mighty  sacrifice  in 
them.  In  that  sacrifice  it  was  that  he  most  felt  his 
working.  That  broke  his  heart,  and  there  he  took 
the  saintly  fire  that  burned  so  brightly  in  him.  It 
is  as  if  the  Paul-soul  were  all  wrapped  in  by  the 
Christ-soul,  and  he  only  speaks  aloud  what  he  feels 


160  CHRIST'S  OBJECT  PARTIL 

within,  when  he  says — "  Yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in 


It  is  also  a  singular  confirmation  of  this  kind  of  evi- 
dence, that  all  living  disciples  of  our  own  time  give  the 
same  kind  of  testimony  from  their  ex- 

This  same  view  .  . 

is  virtually  accept-  penence,  when,  by  their  doctrine,  they 
ed  by  those  who    have   no   ^g^   to   it>       Tkey   have    no 

such  view,  it  rnay  be,  of  Christ,  as  that 
he  is  sent  to  be  a  regenerative  power  on  character ;  the 
lean  kine  of  judicial  satisfaction  have  devoured  the 
good  kine  of  God's  regenerative  bounty,  and  yet  they 
cling  to  Christ  for  a  wonderful  and  blessed  something 
still,  which  he  puts  in  their  feeling,  and  call  him  lov- 
ingly their  life.  Sometimes  they  look  after  a  reason 
why  they  are  so  much  bound  up  in  him,  and  imagine 
that  it  is  their  sense  of  gratitude  to  Christ  for  the  squar- 
ing of  their  account  with  God,  by  his  sufferings  ;  as  if 
they  could  have  him  in  so  great  endearment  for  what 
he  has  suffered  before  God,  apart  from  all  that  he  is  and 
pleads  before  us.  No,  this  working  grace  of  Jesus  goes 
before  all  gratitude,  to  beget  us  in  a  spirit  of  gratitude, 
when  we  have  none ;  it  is  not  the  satisfaction  of  our 
debt,  but  it  is  the  noble  sympathy  in  which  he  draws 
himself  to  us,  the  agony  of  his  concern  for  us,  the  lift- 
ing up  of  his  cross,  in  which  he  proves  his  faithfulness 
even  unto  death — by  these  it  is  that  he  installs  himself 
in  so  tender  a  devotion,  in  all  believers7  hearts.  Thus 
it  is  that  he  gets  into  their  prayers,  into  their  sense  of 
liberty,  into  their  good  conscience,  bathing  them  all 


CHAP.  II.        is    THE    HEALING    OF    SOULS.  161 

over  in  the  glorious  confidence  and  bliss  of  his  con- 
sciously  participated  life.  They  sigh  after  him  with 
Thomas  a  Kempis,  rest  in  him  with  Brainard,  sing  him 
as  the  mighty  power  with  Wesley,  even  though  they 
know  him  in  their  doctrine,  only  as  a  sacrifice  before 
God's  justice. 

Indeed  it  will  be  observed  that  all  effective  preachers 
of  Christ  under  the  penal  satisfaction  doctrine,  quit 
their  base  in  it  instinctively,  when  they  undertake  the 
capture  of  the  heart — falling,  at  once,  into  modes  of 
appeal  that  make  him  God's  Eegenerative  Argument. 
They  show  how  he  loves  the  world,  and  testify  "  the 
love  of  Christ  constraineth  us."  They  magnify  the 
tenderness  of  his  healing  ministry.  They  picture  the 
cross  to  human  sensibility,  as  if  they  really  believed 
that  Christ  was  lifted  up  to  draw  men  to  himself. 
They  can  not  sufficiently  praise  the  beauty  of  his  won- 
derful character.  If  they  think  of  God's  wrath  that 
could  be  assauged  only  by  his  blood,  no  present  feeling 
of  consistency  forbids  their  seeing  God's  patience  in  him, 
and  the  sacrifice  he  will  make  for  his  enemies.  So  they 
preach  him  directly  to  men's  hearts,  in  all  the  most 
winning,  and  subduing,  and  tenderest  things  they  can 
say  of  him ;  as  if  he  were  really  incarnated  in  the 
world  for  that  kind  of  use.  Meantime  they  call  it 
preaching  Christ,  only  when  they  preach  the  satisfac- 
tion, and  complain,  it  may  be  with  real  sadness,  that 
now-a-days,  there  is  so  little  preaching  of  Christ ;  un- 
derstanding in  particular,  that  kind  of  preaching. 
When  alas!  the  poorest,  most  repelling  thing  done  is 

14* 


162  CHRIST'S  OBJECT  PARTII. 

precisely  that ;  and  so  little  of  that  is  done,  just  because 
the  poverty  and  repulsiveness  of  it  are  silently  and 
irresistibly  felt. 

In  general  harmony  with  these  appeals  to  fact  and 

living  evidence,  it  becomes  a  considerable  and  sad  part 

Keckmations  of   of  my  duty,  in  this  chapter,  to  reclaim 

lost  Scripture.  the  }ost  proof  texts,  which  have  been 
carried  over  to  the  side  of  the  satisfaction  theory,  and 
away  from  their  very  obvious  natural  meaning.  I  do 
not  charge  it  as  a  fraud,  that  so  much  of  Scripture  has 
been  stolen  away  from  its  rightful  use  and  import — 
every  mistaken  theory  or  doctrine  of  religion,  which 
obtains  long  use,  gradually  and  unconsciously,  or  by 
fixed  necessity,  converts  the  Scripture  symbols  to  itself 
and  makes  them  its  proselytes.  Take  for  example  the 
texts  that  follow. 

"  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  away  the  sins 
of  the  world."*  It  is  not  said  that  he  taketh  away  the 
punishments  of  the  world,  but  "the  sins"— just  that 
which  was  signified  by  the  sacrifices  of  the  altar  and 
the  scapegoat  sent  away  into  the  wilderness.  The  lamb 
was  not  punished,  neither  was  the  goat.  The  very 
thing  signified  was  the  removal,  or  deportation  of  the 
.sin. 

"  In  this  was  manifested  the  love  of  God  toward  us, 

because  that  God  sent  his  only  begotten  son  into  the 

world,  that  we  might  live  through  him."-):     "  That  we 

anight  live  "  gets  to  mean  that  we  might  have  our  penal 

*  John  L  29.  f  1  John  iv.  9. 


CliUP.  II.         is    THE    HEALING    OF    SOULS.  163 

liability  released  and  nothing  more.  A  previous  verse 
in  the  epistle — "  For  the  Life  was  manifested,  and  we 
have  seen  it,  and  bear  witness  and  show  unto  you  that 
Eternal  Life  which  was  with  the  Father  and  was  mani- 
fested unto  us  " — raises  no  barrier  against  a  construction 
so  frigid,  even  though  it  tells  us  expressly  that  Christ 
was  incarnated  to  be  the  manifested  Life,  the  same  that 
was  with  the  Father  and  is  to  beget,  or  be,  eternal  life 
in  us. 

"  Who  his  own  self  bare  our  sins,  in  his  own  body 
on  the  tree,  that  we,  being  dead  to  sin,  might  live  unto 
righteousness  ;  by  whose  stripes  ye  were  healed."*  This 
passage  is  used  very  much  as  if  the  "  bearing  of  the 
sins,"  and  the  "stripes"  spoken  of,  were  the  whole 
matter ;  whereupon  the  judicial  substitution  theory  has 
nothing  to  do  but  to  assign  its  own  construction  and 
take  the  text  into  its  own  particular  service.  Meantime 
the  very  bearing  of  sins  has  its  end,  or  aim,  plainly  de- 
clared and  is  itself  to  be  qualified  by  its  aim — it  is  that 
we  may  "live  unto  righteousness;"  being,  as  we  see,  an 
appeal  of  suffering  for  us,  to  work  a  change  inwardly  in 
our  life,  and  beget  us  anew  in  righteousness.  And  so 
of  the  "stripes;"  they  are  not  penal  stripes,  inflicted  for 
God's  satisfaction,  but  such  kind  of  suffering  as  works 
a  divine  healing  in  us — "By  whose  stripes  ye  were 
healed." 

"  For  Christ  also  hath  suffered  for  sins,  the  just  for 
the  unjust,  that  he  might  bring  us  unto  God."f  As  if 
this  suffering,  the  just  for  the  unjust,  must,  of  course, 
*  1  Peter  ii.  24.  f  l  Peter  *»•  18- 


164  CHRIST'S  OBJECT  PAOTII. 

mean  a  suffering  of  penalty  for  the  unjust,  when  it  is 
even  declared,  as  the  object  of  the  suffering  ministry 
and  mission — "  that  he  might  bring  us  unto  God." 

ci  Who  gave  himself  for  our  sins,  that  he  might  de- 
liver us  from  this  present  evil  world."*  It  is  not  from 
God's  justice,  not  from  any  future  wrath,  that  Christ 
will  deliver,  when  he  gives  himself  for  our  sins — no 
compensation  to  God's  law  is  even  thought  of — but  he 
gives  himself  to  deliver  us  from  a  state  of  evil  now 
present ;  from  corrupt  custom,  the  law  of  this  world, 
the  spirit  that  now  worketh  in  the  children  of  disobedi- 
ence. 

"  Christ  hath  redeemed  us  from  the  curse  of  the  law, 
being  made  a  curse  for  us.  That  the  blessing  of  Abra- 
ham might  come  on  the  Gentiles  through  Jesus  Christ."f 
Probably  the  expression  "being  made  a  curse  for  us," 
does  imply  that  he  somehow  comes  under  the  retributive 
consequences  of  our  sin — in  what  manner  will  hereafter 
be  explained — but  that  will  not  justify  the  conclusion 
that  Christ's  chief  errand  is  to  satisfy  God's  justice,  and 
so  to  prepare  the  forgiveness  of  sin.  Is  not  the  object 
plainly  declared,  viz.,  "  that  the  blessing  of  Abraham 
might  come  on  the  Gentiles  ?"  Is  it  then  the  blessing 
of  Abraham,  that  God  is  satisfied  in  him,  and  forgive- 
ness of  sins  obtained  by  him  ?  or  is  it  rather  that  the 
Gentiles  might  come  as  near  to  God  as  Abraham  was, 
and  be  so  wrought  in  as  to  be  also  friends  of  God  with 
him? 

"  Therefore,  if  any  man  be  in  Christ,  he  is  a  new 

*  Gal.  14.  f  Gal.  iii.  13-14. 


CHAP.  II.        IS    THE    HEALING    OF    SOULS.  166 

creature,  old  things  are  passed  away,  behold  all  things 
here  become  new.  And  all  things  are  of  God  who  hath 
reconciled  us  to  himself  by  Jesus  Christ.*  How  much 
do  we  hear  of  the  reconciliation  of  God  by  Christ! 
and  yet  the  very  word  is  a  word  of  transformation 
wholly  inapplicable  to  God ;  and  what  is  more,  it  is 
here  even  formally  applied  to  us — "hath  reconciled 
us."  Besides  the  "all  things"  which  are  said  to 
come  of  God,  in  this  reconciliation,  are  precisely  the 
new  things  before  comprehended  in  the  becoming  "a 
new  creature."  It  would  seem  to  be  even  impossible  to 
get  these  words  into  the  use  they  have  so  commonly 
been  made  to  serve.  And  then  how  much  more,  when 
it  follows  immediately  as  a  whole  description  or  summa- 
tion of  the  gospel  itself — "to  wit,  that  God  was  in 
Christ  reconciling  the  world  unto  himself."  It  is  one 
thing  to  reconcile  the  world,  and  a  very  different  to 
reconcile  God. 

"  That  he  might  be  a  merciful  and  faithful  high 
priest,  in  things  pertaining  to  God,  to  make  reconcilia- 
tion for  the  sins  of  the  people.  For  in  that  he  himself 
hath  suffered,  being  tempted,  he  is  able  to  succor  them 
that  are  tempted."f  Here  we  have  the  priestly  figure, 
and  the  "reconciliation"  is  a  different  word,  derived 
from  the  atonement  service  of  the  altar;  and  it  is  a  re- 
conciliation not  of  man,  but  "  for  sins ;"  all  which  ap- 
pears to  favor,  in  a  certain  degee,  the  satisfaction  theory 
which  it  is  continually  cited  to  support.  And  yet  the 
object  specified  in  the  words  that  follow  turns  back,  how 

*  2  Cor.  v.  17-18.  2  Heb.  17-18. 


166  CHRIST'S  OBJECT  PAKTII. 

plainly,  all  such  constructions,  showing,  at  the  same 
time,  how  easy  it  is  to  miss  the  genuine  import  of  this 
kind  of  figure,  by  taking  it  too  closely  and  with  too 
little  range  of  liberty.  For,  in  that  he  himself  hath 
suffered,  in  his  great  trial  and  sacrifice,  says  our  apostle, 
he  has  brought  us  succor  in  our  trial,  so  that  he,  by  that 
succor,  is  truly  our  priest,  as  he  undertook  to  be,  and 
becomes  the  soul-help  in  his  sacrifice  that  takes  away 
our  sin.  Every  thing  turns  after  all,  in  these  high  fig- 
ures of  the  altar,  and  is  meant  to  turn,  on  the  nearness 
into  which  he  is  brought,  and  the  dear  sympathy  proved 
by  his  sacrifice. 

I  will  not  go  on  to  cite  other  texts  that  have  shared 
the  same  hard  fortune,  but  will  only  say,  in  general, 
that  a  numerous  and  very  important  class,  which  repre- 
sent the  lustral  figures  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  speak 
of  Christ  in  one  way  or  another  as  having  "washed," 
or  "purged,"  or  " cleansed,"  or  "  sprinkled,"  the  soul, 
are  systematically  converted  from  that  natural  and  easy 
signification,  to  denote  a  clearance  before  the  law,  now 
satisfied ;  when  there  is,  in  fact,  no  cleansing  wrought 
in  the  defilement  that  was  created  by  disobedience  to  it. 
Whereas  it  is  the  very  purpose  of  these  lustral  transac- 
tions, or  rites — that  for  which  they  were  specially  pre- 
pared of  old — first,  by  a  kind  of  implicit  force,  or  power 
of  religious  association,  to  push  the  mind  of  a  crude 
age  forward  into  a  cleanness  it  could  not  think ;  and 
then,  afterwards,  to  be  a  symbol  under  Christ  of  that 
spiritual  cleansing  otherwise  difficult  to  be  expressed. 
Thus  when  the  argument  is,  "  For  if  the  blood  of  bulls 


CHAP.  II.        is    THE    HEALING    OF 

and  of  goats  and  the  ashes  of  an  heifer,  sprinkling  the 
unclean,  sanctifieth  to  the  purifying  of  the  flesh :  How 
much  more  shall  the  blood  of  Christ,  who,  through  the 
eternal  Spirit,  offered  himself  without  spot  to  God, 
purge  your  conscience  from  dead  works  to  serve  the 
living  God  "  * — what  can  be  more  plain  than  that  the 
cleansing  here  spoken  of  is  no  mere  change  in  the 
soul's  legal  possibilities,  but  a  lustration  of  "  the  con- 
science "  itself,  and  a  turning  of  the  soul  inwardly,  away 
from  sin,  to  the  service  and  obedience  of  God?  So  of 
all  the  like  figures — they  have  no  reference  whatever  to 
the  matter  of  a  judicial  satisfaction,  but  simply  to  sanc- 
tification  of  character. 

If  now  all  these  reclamations  of  Scripture  were  made, 
there  would  be  very  little  left  to  give  a  complexion  of 
authority  to  any  other  conclusion,  than  that  Christ  is 
here  for  what  he  can  do  in  the  restoration  of  character. 
To  prove  a  negative  so  wide  is  difficult,  and  therefore 
only  do  I  withhold  from  saying  that  nothing  will  be 
left.  Still,  if  I  am  able  to  show,  in  the  next  chapter, 
that  he  is  represented  as  having  come,  first  of  all,  and 
above  all  things  beside,  to  be  a  power  on  character, 
which  power  he  became  in  the  vicarious  suffering  of 
his  life  and  death,  it  will  amount,  as  nearly  as  possible, 
to  the  same  thing. 

•  Heb.  ix,  13,  14. 


CHAPTER  III. 

HE  IS  TO  BE  GOD'S  POWER  IN  WORKING  SUCH 
RECOVERY. 

IN  ordinary  cases  where  a  work  is  undertaken,  it  sig- 
nifies nothing  more  to  say  that  the  doer  undertakes  to 
be  a  power  to  that  effect ;  for  whatever  is  to  be  donet 
by  action,  supposes,  of  course,  a  power  acting.  But 
where  there  is  something  to  be  done,  not  by  action,  but 
by  quality  of  being,  or  by  the  worth,  and  beauty,  and 
divine  greatness  of  a  character,  the  action  is  nothing 
and  the  power  to  be  effective  thus,  in  simply  being  what 
it  is,  every  thing.  Therefore,  when  we  say,  and  show 
that  Christ  is  here  to  new-create,  or  regenerate,  fallen 
character,  it  is  not  insignificant  to  add  that  he  is  here  to 
be,  or  become,  so  great  a  power.  For  the  new  creation 
we  speak  of  is  not  a  work  to  be  carried  by  any  kind  of 
doing,  or  efficient  activity,  or  even  by  the  fiat-force  of 
omnipotence  itself,  but  only  by  such  higher  kind  of 
potency,  as  can  do  so  great  a  thing,  through  our  con- 
sent, and  without  infringing  our  liberty ;  do  it,  that  is, 

Two  kinds  of  by  the  felt  quality  of  being,  or  holy  im- 
power.  pulsion  of  worth  and  beauty  it  em- 
bodies. How  far  it  may  be  the  way  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
to  operate  in  the  regeneration  of  character  by  action,  or 
the  doing  method,  we  do  not  know  ;  doubtless  God  will 


CHAP.  III.  HE   IS  TO    BE  GOD'S  POWER,   ETC.          169 

do  for  us  by  the  force-principle  all  that  may  be  done  by 
it  ;  but  the  force-principle  is  not  related  plainly  to  the 
doing  of  all  which  requires  to  be  done  in  the  matter  of 
so  great  a  change,  unless  it  be  in  ways  circuitous,  and 
one  remove  distant  from  the  will  ;  for  to  operate  this 
change,  by  any  method  that  overrides,  or  even  omits 
our  concurrent  choice,  is  not  to  change  our  character, 
but  to  demolish  our  personality.  A  great  power  then 
is  wanted,  which  can  pierce,  and  press,  and  draw,  and 
sway,  and,  as  it  were,  new  crystalize  the  soul,  which 
still  is  not  any  kind  of  force.  And  considering  what 
the  change  is  which  the  Scripture  itself  proposes,  we 
even  look  to  see  some  different,  higher  kind  of  power 
brought  into  the  field,  and  magnified  as  the  hope  of  our 
salvation.  In  Christ,  accordingly,  we  find  this  higher 
power  so  magnified  —  a  power  that  we  may  call  the 
Moral  Power  of  God.  And  the  repre- 

.       .          .  Christ  in  his  sac- 

sentation  is  that  Christ,  by  his  incarnate   n&cQ  becomes  the 


life  and  passion,  becomes  that  higher  moral   P°wer    of 
kind  of  power  —  executing,  in  that  man- 
ner, or  by  virtue  of  that  kind  of  power,  the  internal 
new  creation,  for  which,  as  was  shown  in  the  last  chap- 
ter, he  came  into  the'  world. 

My  present  chapter,  accordingly,  will  be  occupied 
with  the  fact  that  Christ's  saving  mission  turns  upon 
his  having  become  such  a  power.  And  then  my  next 
will  show  how  he  becomes  such  a  power  in  the  facts  of 
his  personal  history. 

In  pursuing  the  subject  assigned,  a  first  matter  will 
15 


170  HE    IS    TO    BE    GOD'S    POWER          PART  II 

be  to  distinguish  accurately  what  we  are  to  understand, 
by  the  supposed  moral  power. 

Is  it  then  that  Christ  is  to  be  such  a  kind  of  power  as 
we  mean  when  we  speak  of  example?     Certainly  not, 

His  moral  power    if  WG    take    the    WOrd    example,    ill    its 

is  not  the  power  of   most  proper  and  common  signification. 

example.  A  -,  .         . 

An  example,  we  conceive,  is  a  model 
that  we  copy,  and  set  ourselves,  by  our  own  will,  to  re- 
produce in  ourselves.  Many  teachers  have  been  rising 
up,  in  all  the  past  ages,  and  propounding  it  as  the  true 
theory  of  the  gospel,  that  Christ  came  forth  to  be  a  Re- 
deemer, in  the  way  of  being  an  example.  But  no  theory 
of  the  kind  has  ever  been  able,  under  the  very  meager 
and  restricted  word  example,  to  get  any  show  of  gene- 
ral acceptance.  For  the  truth  is  that  we  consciously 
want  something  better  than  a  model  to  be  copied ;  some 
vehicle  of  God  to  the  sou,l,  that  is  able  to  copy  God 
into  it.  Something  is  wanted  that  shall  go  before  and 
beget,  in  us,  the  disposition  to  copy  an  example. 

Sometimes   the    example    theory   has    been    stated 
broadly  enough  to  include  the  demonstration  of  the  di- 

Notbythereve-  vine  love  in  Christ's  life.  Sometimes, 
lation  merely  of  also,  this  demonstration  of  the  divine 
love,  apart  from  any  thing  said  of  ex- 
ample, has  been  put  forward  as  the  object  of  his  mis- 
sion ;  love  being  regarded  as  the  sufficient  reconciling 
power  of  God  on  human  character.  But  no  such  view 
has  ever  gained  a  wide  acceptance ;  not  for  the  reason, 
I  must  think,  that  God's  love  is  not  a  great  power  on 
the  feeling  of  mankind,  or  that,  when  it  is  revealed  in 


CHAP.  III.      IN   WORKING  SUCH  RECOVERY.  171 

Christ,  it  does  not  go  far  to  make  up  the  requisite 
power ;  but  that  consciously  we  need  other  and  sturdier 
elements  to  produce  impressions,  equal  to  the  change 
proposed  in  our  spiritual  transformation.  Mere  love, 
as  we  commonly  conceive  the  word,  suffers  disrespect. 
We  need  somehow  to  feel  that  the  love  is  a  principled 
love,  grounded  in  immovable  convictions  of  right. 
There  is  no  so  very  intense  power  in  love,  when  de- 
scending even  to  the  greatest  possible  sacrifice,  if  we 
are  allowed  to  think  of  it  as  being  only  a  mood  of  natu- 
ral softness,  or  merely  instinctive  sympathy.  Many 
animals  will  rush  after  one  of  their  kind  in  distress,  and 
pitch  themselves  into  the  toils  of  their  captors,  by  mere 
sympathy  of  kind.  To  magnify  love  therefore,  even 
the  love  of  the  cross,  as  being  itself  the  new-creating 
power  of  God,  would  be  a  very  great  mistake,  if  the 
righteous  rule  of  God  is  not  somehow  included.  When 
Jesus  in  his  sacrifice  takes  our  lot  upon  his  feeling,  and 
goes  even  to  the  cross  for  us,  we  need  also  to  conceive 
that  he  does  this  for  the  right,  and  because  the  everlast- 
ing word  of  righteousness  commands  him.  Not  all  that 
belongs  to  this  matter  can  be  said  as  effectively  here  as 
it  may  be,  when  we  come,  in  the  Third  Part,  to  con- 
sider the  relations  of  the  sacrifice  to  law.  So  much  is 
added  here  only  to  fasten,  or  sufficiently  affirm,  the  con- 
viction, that  no  purely  favoring,  sympathetic  kind  of 
intervention,  however  self-sacrificing,  can  be  any  suffi- 
cient power  on  character  to  be  a  salvation. 

By  the  moral  power  of  God,  or  of  Christ  as  the  man- 
ifested reality  of  God,  we  understand,  comprehensively 


172  HE    IS    TO    BE    GOD'S    POWER          PART II. 

the  power  of  all  God's  moral  perfections,  in  one  word, 
of  his  greatness.  And  by  greatness  we  mean  greatness 
The  moral  power  of  character;  for  there  is  no  greatness 
of  God  is  the  great-  in  force,  no  greatness  in  quantity,  or 
height,  or  antiquity  of  being,  no  great- 
ness any  where  but  in  character.  In  this  it  is  that  so 
great  moral  power  is  conceived  to  be  developed,  in  the 
self-devoting  sacrifice  of  Christ's  life  and  death. 

It  would  even  be  a  kind  of  irreverence,  not  to  assume 
that  God  is  mightiest,  and  capable  of  doing  the  most 
difficult  things,  even  as  great  men  are,  by  his  moral 
power.  Alexander,  for  example,  leads  the  tramp  of 
force  and  victory  across  resisting  empires,  finally  to  be 
vanquished,  in  turn,  by  the  fascinations  of  a  woman, 
and  to  die,  a  second  time  vanquished  by  his  appetites, 
in  a  fit  of  debauch.  But  those  great  souls  of  his  coun- 
trymen who  rose  into  power  by  their  virtues,  and  died 
for  their  virtue's  sake,  such  as  Aristides  and  Socrates — 
why  they  keep  on  vanquishing  the  world  and  binding 
it  to  the  sway  of  their  character,  and  will  as  long  as  it 
exists.  The  power  of  Napoleon  is,  in  the  same  way, 
force,  that  of  Washington,  character.  One  is  the  ter- 
ror of  his  time,  and  when  his  time  is  over,  is  no  more 
any  thing  but  a  prodigy  of  force  remembered.  The 
other  holds  the  spell  of  a  morally  great,  ever-increasing 
name,  felt  by  all  rulers  of  men  both  good  and  bad,  pen- 
etrating more  and  more  resistlessly  the  revolutions,  and 
laws,  and  legislations  of  all  proudest  empires,  and  new- 
est commonwealths  of  the  globe  ;  more  to  'be  felt  than 
now,  just  in  proportion  as  the  world  grows  older,  and  is 


CHAP.  III.     IN  WORKING  SUCH  RECOVERY.  173 

more  advanced  in  good.  So  also  it  is  that  God  is  doing 
always,  and  to  do,  what  is  most  difficult  and  nearest  to 
being  impossible,  not  by  his  omnipotence,  The  greatest 
but  by  his  great  character  and  feeling,  power  of  God. 
When  he  commands — "  Let  there  be  light " — and  the 
new  sprung  day  flashes  athwart  all  orbs  and  skies,  it  is 
indeed  a  mighty  and  sublime  power  that  he  wields,  but  his 
great  character  in  good,  what  he  is,  and  loves  to  do,  and 
is  willing  to  suffer,  as  discovered  in  the  incarnate  mis- 
sion of  Jesus — how  much  vaster,  and  nobler,  and  more 
sovereign,  is  the  power,  new-creating  all  the  fallen  sen- 
timents, affinities  and  choices  of  souls.  It  did  not  burst 
fiat-like  on  the  world,  six  thousand  years  ago,  and  stop, 
but  it  flows  out  continuously,  as  a  river  of  great  senti- 
ment, bathing  men's  feeling  as  a  power  of  life,  raising 
their  conceptions  of  good  and  of  God,  and  dissolving 
their  bad  will  into  conscious  affinity  with  His.  Doing 
this  from  age  to  age,  it  will  finally  transform,  we  can 
easily  believe,  the  general  apostasy  and  corruption  of 
mankind.  Now  that  Christ  came  into  the  world  to  be 
this  kind  of  power,  was  most  evidently  the  impression 
that  he  had  of  himself.  Thus  it  is  to  this  very  point 
that  he  is  brought,  in  his  remarkable  discourse  on  re- 
generation, where  he  passes  on  to  say — "  And  as  Moses 
lifted  up  the  serpent  in  the  wilderness,  christ  has  thi8 
even  so  must  the  Son  of  man  be  lifted  conception  him- 
up,  that  whosoever  believeth  in  him  s 
should  not  perish,  but  have  eternal  life."  According  to 
the  analogy  of  the  figure  referred  to,  he  is  here,  and  is 
in  fact  to  be  lifted  up,  that  he  may  be  a  quickening, 

15* 


174  HE    IS    TO    BE    GOD'S    POWER          PART  II. 

healing  power — "  eternal  life  " — in  men's  hearts.  The 
representation  is  that  he  will  be  the  regenerator  of  souls, 
not  by  action  upon  them,  but  by  what  he  is  to  sight. 
There  shall  be  that  in  him,  that  quality  of  good  and 
glory,  which,  being  fixedly  beheld,  shall  go  through  all 
inmost  distemper  and  subtilty  of  sin,  as  a  power  of  im- 
mortal healing. 

It  comes  to  very  nearly  the  same  thing  when  he  says 
— "  And  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up,  will  draw  all  men  unto 
me."  The  supposition  is,  we  perceive,  that  he  is  going 
to  the  cross  for  men,  and  that  by  that  powerful  argu- 
ment he  will  draw  them,  as  by  new-born  affinities,  away 
from  their  sin,  to  a  lasting  and  fixed  unity  with  his 
person. 

We  distinguish  the  same  thing  under  a  different  ver- 
sion, where  he  gives  it  so  expressly  as  the  meaning  of 
his  errand,  that  he  is  come  to  be  the  king  of  truth,  and 
sway  men's  hearts  by  the  truth-power  of  his  life. 
"  To  this  end  was  I  born,  and  for  this  cause  came  I  into 
the  world,  that  I  should  bear  witness  to  the  truth.  Every 
one  that  is  of  the  truth  heareth  my  voice."  In  a  very 
important  sense,  he  is  to  be  the  truth ;  for  all  that  is  most 
quickening  in  God's  feeling  and  beauty,  all  that  is  most 
powerful  to  sway  the  convictions  and  constrain  the  free 
allegiance  of  souls,  is  to  be  shown,  not  in  his  doctrine 
only,  but  more  mightily  far  in  his  healing  ministry  and 
death  of  sorrow.  And  so  he  is  to  gain  subjects  for  his 
kingdom,  not  so  much  by  any  direct  doing  in  them,  or 
action  upon  them,  but  by  the  sublime  royalties  of  his 
character. 


CUAP.  III.     IN   WORKING   SUCH   RECOVERY.  175 

Beginning  thus  at  the  conception  Christ  has  of  him- 
self, we  should  naturally  look  to  find  expectations  going 
before,  and  impressions  of  witnesses  com- 

f,  ITT  ,-i  i  The     ancient 

mg   after,    holding  a  perceptible   agree-   scriptures  have 
ment  with  him.     Thus  we  have  a  picture  thia    conception 

„  ,  .  .  ,  A   ,      ,  r          of  the  Messiah, 

given  of  his  corning  in  the  stately  Mes- 
sianic Psalm — "  He  shall  come  down,  like  rain  upon 
the  mown  grass,  like  showers  that  water  the  earth.  In 
his  days  shall  the  righteous  flourish,  and  abundance  of 
peace  so  long  as  the  moon  endureth.  He  shall  have 
dominion  from  sea  to  sea,  and  from  the  rivers  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth."  Being  thus  like  rain,  or  like  show- 
ers, he  will  quicken  men's  hearts  by  absorption,  as  it 
were,  of  his  fertilizing  properties,  and  so  take  "  domin- 
ion "  from  within. 

So  the  famous  vicarious  prophecy  of  Isaiah  is  a 
prophecy,  in  fact,  of  power.  He  shall  heal  by  the 
"  stripes  "  of  his  patience.  He  shall  even  be  a  great  con- 
queror— not  by  his  prowess,  but  by  his  suffering  death. 
"  Therefore  will  I  divide  him  a  portion  with  the  great, 
and  he  shall  divide  the  spoil  with  the  strong ;  because 
he  hath  poured  out  his  soul  unto  death."  To  the  same 
general  effect  is  the  prophet's  word,  when  he  writes — 
"  Who  is  this  that  cometh  from  Edom,  and  with  dyed 
garments  from  Bozrah  ?  this  that  is  glorious  in  his  ap- 
parel traveling  in  the  greatness  of  his  strength?  I 
that  speak  in  righteousness  mighty  to  save."  There  is 
a  mixture  of  suffering  and  power,  crowding  each  the 
other,  as  it  were,  all  through  the  picture.  His  apparel 
i3  "red"  with  stains  of  blood,  and  yet  it  is  "glorious 


176  HE    IS    TO    BE    GOD'S    POWER          PART  IT. 

apparel."  He  "treads  the  wine-press  alone,"  yet  "trav- 
els in  the  greatness  of  his  strength."  Finding  "  none 
to  help  or  uphold,"  he  is  none  the  less  "  mighty  to 
save."  And  what  is  the  solution  but  that  power  is  to 
be  the  fruit  of  his  suffering  ? 

It  is  generally  understood  that  Ezekiel's  rill,  flowing 
out  from  under  the  threshhold  of  the  temple,  widening 
into  a  river  in  its  flow,  and  pouring  on  through  desert 
regions,  "  healing  the  fishes,"  and  causing  "  every  thing 
to  live,  where  it  cometh,"  fringing  also  its  border  all 
the  way  with  trees  whose  "  fruit  shall  be  for  meat  and 
leaf  for  medicine,"  is  a  picture  of  that  originally  despised 
but  ever  increasing  power,  by  which  Christ  will  reno- 
vate and  restore  the  world.  It  will  be  that  kind  of 
power  which  is  at  once  silent  and  sovereign,  moving  by 
no  shock,  but  only  as  health,  when  it  creeps  in  after, 
and  along  the  subtle  paths  of  disease. 

With  these  more  ancient  prophecies  and  expectations 
the  contemporaneous  impressions  of  John  correspond. 
He  announces  a  great  king  at  hand,  who  shall  be 
so  transcendent  in  dignity,  that  he  himself  shall  not 
be  worthy  even  to  untie  his  sandals — "He  must  in- 
crease, but  I  must  decrease."  Some  of  the  imagery  he 
employs  is  energetic  and  almost  violent ;  but  when  the 
Great  Expected  appears,  what  but  this  is.  the  greeting 
he  offers—"  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God!" 

In  this  manner  we  are  prepared,  when  we  come  to 
the  apostles  and  first  preachers  after  Christ,  to  hear 
them  break  into  expression,  by  some  word  more  ade- 
quate and  thought  more  definite.  And  therefore  we  are 


CHAP.  III.     IN  WORKING  SUCH   RECOVERY.  177 

not  surprised,  when  they  put  down  their  testimony,  in 
the  word  power.  And  this  we  shall  find  is  their  impres- 
sion of  the  gospel  and  of  Christ  as  the  „. 

His  apostles  com- 

sum  of  it.  They  have  other,  more  cir-  ing  after  have  the 
cuitous  and  tropical  expressions,  but  8ame* 
when  they  come  directly  to  the  matter  as  it  is,  they  say 
POWER — "  declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with  power  " — 
"  to  us  who  are  saved  the  power  of  God  " — "  the  power 
of  God  unto  salvation  to  every  one  that  believeth." 

Of  these  three  several  testimonies,  the  first  is  con- 
nected with  the  fact  of  the  resurrection.  "  Declared  to 
be  the  Son  of  God  with  power,  by  the  resurrection 
from  the  dead;"  with  which  another  expression  cor- 
responds ;  viz.,  "  That  I  may  know  him  and  the  power 
of  his  resurrection."  The  impression  is  not  that  there  is 
any  such  renewing  power  in  Christ's  resurrection  itself, 
but  that  in  the  fact  of  his  resurrection  comes  out  the 
real  height  of  his  person,  and  that  so  the  moral  wonder 
of  his  sacrifice  is  there,  for  the  first  time,  discovered. 
Before  in  his  death  he  was  but  a  man,  a  defeated  and 
prostrate  man,  covered  with  unutterable  ignominy ;  but 
when  he  rises,  the  fact  of  some  transcendent  nature 
is  discovered  in  him,  and  a  great  revision  follows  in 
the  impressions  had  of  his  person.  He  becomes,  at 
once,  a  wholly  different  being,  whose  life  and  death 
take,  both,  a  wholly  different  meaning.  In  respect  of 
the  flesh,  he  was  the  seed  of  David ;  now  he  is  the  Son 
of  God  with  power,  according  to  the  higher  divine 
Spirit  working  in  his  person. 

In  the  second  passage  cited,  the  preaching  of  the 


178  HE    IS    TO    BE    GOD'S    POWER          PART  IL 

cross  is  the  subject,  and  any  kind  of  preaching,  which 
undertakes  to  catch  men  by  fine  words,  and  tricks  of 
philosophic  subtilty,  is  deprecated,  because  it  makes 
"  the  preaching  of  the  cross  of  none  effect."  All 
genuine  effect,  the  apostle  is  showing,  comes  of  the 
power  of  the  cross  itself.  This  to  us  who  are  saved  is 
even  the  power  of  God ;  or,  as  he  says  again  shortly 
after,  unable  to  get  away  from  the  ruling  thought  of 
his  ministry — "  Christ  the  power  of  God  and  the  wis- 
dom of  God." 

Again,  in  the  third  passage,  the  apostle  is  giving  his 
deliberate  account  of  the  gospel,  that  which  constitutes 
the  essential  meaning  and  operative  value  of  the  gift — 
"  For  I  am  not  ashamed  of  the  gospel  of  Christ ;  for  it  is 
the  power  of  God  unto  salvation  to  every  one  that  be- 
lieveth."  Therefore  lie  was  always  sighing — "  that  the 
power  of  Christ  may  rest  on  me."  I  know  not  how  it 
is,  but  this  word  power  appears  to  pass  for  nothing  in 
common  use,  and  the  passage  is  apparently  under- 
stood as  if  it  read  only — "the  way  of  God  unto  salva- 
tion " — the  understanding  had  of  it  being,  that  Christ 
has  purchased  forgiveness  for  us  and  made  salvation 
possible  and  nothing  more.  Whereas  it  was  the  partic- 
ular intent  of  the  apostle  to  give  his  deliberate  summa- 
tion of  the  gospel  in  this  very  word  power,  and  to  mag- 
nify Christ  in  it,  as  being  the  new-creating  life  of  God 
in  souls — in  that  sense  and  no  other  a  salvation.  And 
if  any  one  still  doubts,  whether  he  has  any  so  stringent 
and  decisive  meaning  in.  this  word,  imagining  that  he 
'does  not  think,  after  all,  of  asserting  any  thing  in  that 


CKAP.  III.     ix   WORKING  SUCH   RECOVERY.  179 

precise  way,  but  only  throws  in  the  word  for  declama- 
tion's sake,  as  a  word  of  emphasis,  or  enhancement,  it 
will  be  found  that  he  uses  the  w6rd  again  in  a  connec- 
tion that  shows  him  to  be  thinking  specially  of  the  moral 
efficacy  of  Christ,  and  also  with  a  predicate  of  degree  that 
fixes  the  meaning.  For  God  who  commanded  the  light 
to  shine  out  of  darkness  [saying,  "  Let  there  be  light "] 
hath  ehined  [with  a  like  moral  sovereignty]  in  our 
hearts,  to  give  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory 
of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ.  But  we  have  this 
treasure  in  earthen  vessels,  that  the  excellency  of  the 
power  may  be  of  God,  and  not  of  us  "  [as  if  vessels  of 
power  in  ourselves.]  *  If  he  means,  after  all,  to  only 
magnify  the  gospel  in  a  declamatory  way  by  this  word 
power,  why  does  he  fasten  our  attention  down  upon  the 
degree  of  its  efficacy  by  this' predicate  of  "excellency?" 

Thus  far  we  appeal  to  Paul.  Peter  also  expresses 
the  same  conception  of  the  gospel,  only  less  vigorously, 
when  he  says — "  According  as  his  divine  power  hath 
given  us  all  things  pertaining  to  life  and  godliness, 
through  the  knowledge  of  him  [Christ]  that  hath  called 
us  by  glory  and  virtue  ;"  that  is,  by  the  manifested  glory 
and  excellence  of  his  life.  The  English  translation, 
"  called  us  to  glory  and  virtue "  it  is  generally  agreed 
is  mistaken. 

John  again  expresses  the  same  thing  in  many  ways, 
as  when  he  says — "  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ  his  Son 
cleanseth  us  from  all  sin ;"  or  again  when  he  says — 
u  Ye  know  that  he  was  manifested  to  take  away  our 
sins."  To  cleanse  us  from  all  sin,  to  take  it  away,  by 


180  HE    IS    TO    BE    GOD'S    POWER          PART  II. 

force  of  what  is  manifested  in  him,  is  the  same  thing  as 
to  be  the  moral  power  which  masters  the  soul's  inward 
disorder,  and  renews  it  in  holiness  of  life. 

I  will  not  go  on  to  multiply  citations,  but,  lest  it  should 
seem  that  we  are  obliged  to  glean  for  them,  I  will  sim- 
ply say  that  this  moral  power  of  God  in  Christ  bears 

The  apostles  such  immense  sway,  in  the  feeling  of  all 
make  use  of  ail  foQ  jq-ew  Testament  writers,  that  they  are 

most  violent  fig-  .  . 

ures  when  they  continually  seizing  on  this  or  that  image, 
speak  of  it.  or  fact  of  physical  power  in  the  world,  to 
give  their  impression.  Even  the  most  forcefully  violent 
and  terrible  images  are  laid  hold  of — any  thing  to  rep- 
resent the  all-subduing,  all -transforming,  inwardly  re- 
newing, outwardly  dominating,  efficacy  of  Christ  and 
the  kingdom  of  God,  revealed  in  his  Messiahship. 

They  conceive  him  as  a  wondrously  detergent  power 
in  souls,  "washing  and  making  white,"  "cleansing  from 
sin,"  "  purging  the  conscience." 

They  conceive  him  going  through  the  sick,  disordered 
mind,  even  as  some  healing  medicine,  or  miracle,  goes 
through  the  hidden  maladies  of  bodies,  to  search  out 
and  expel  disease. 

They  call  him  a  power  of  leaven,  brought  into  the 
world  to  work ;  heaving  in  the  general  mass  and  willful 
stupor  of  it,  till  all  is  leavened. 

They  call  him  the  day-star,  because  he  heralds  the 
mind's  day  and  the  expulsion  of  its  dreadful  night ;  and 
the  light,  because  the  instant  flash  of  that  element  strikes 
farthest  into  God's  physical  empire,  and  changest  most 
the  face  of  it ;  and  the  sun,  because  the  exhaustless  heat 


CHAP.  III.     IN  WORKING  SUCH  RECOVERY.  181 

of  that  central  fire  in  the  sky,  has  power  to  keep  the 
planet  in  habitable  order,  and  even  to  vivify  the 
otherwise  dead  matter  of  it  in  processes  of  growth. 

They  call  him  Life  itself,  because  the  quickening 
spell  of  it,  among  the  world's  dead  atoms,  carpets  the 
ground  with  beauty  and  fills  the  air  itself  with  hover- 
ing motion. 

They  conceive  him  as  a  fire  that  is  already  kindled, 
in  the  rubbish  of  the  world's  prescriptive  falsities  and 
wrongs,  whose  burning  nothing  can  stop. 

His  kingdom  and  the  resistless  moral  power  of  his 
gospel,  they  resemble  to  lightning,  darting  from  east  to 
west,  and  flashing  across  all  boundaries. 

His  word  they  compare  to  the  swing  of  an  earthquake, 
"  shaking  not  the  earth  only  but  also  heaven  " — shaking 
down,  that  is,  all  stoutest  fabrics  of  error  and  perscrip- 
tive  wrong,  and  leaving  nothing  to  stand,  but  that  im- 
mortal truth  and  good  that  can  not  be  shaken.* 

They  describe  him  in  his  cross  as  an  immense,  world- 
compelling  attraction,  moving  such  control  in  the  once 
dead  feelings  and  convictions  of  sin  as  will  "  draw  all 
men  unto  him,"  even  as  the  whirlpool  draws  all  drift- 
ing objects  and  even  passing  ships  into  its  vortex. 

He  is  even  to  be  a  chariot  of  thunder  in  the  clouds — 
"  coming  in  the  clouds  of  heaven  in  power  and  great 

*  The  passage  referred  to  (Heb.  xii,  3G-7)  is  commonly  interpreted  aa 
relating  to  the  second  coming  of  Christ,  and  perhaps  it  is  partly  so 
used  by  the  apostle,  but  the  promise  cited  from  Haggai  (ii,  6)  plainly 
relates  to  his  first  coming,  in  which  view  the  things  shaken  are  the 
old  religion;  those  which  remain  and  can  not  be  shaken,  the  gospel. 

16 


182  HE    IS    TO    BE    GOD'S    POWER          PART  IT. 

glory  " — by  that  oriental  sign  of  royal  majesty,  showing 
that  the  kingdom  of  God  is  come  with  power. 

It  is,  in  short,  as  if  some  new,  great  power  had 
broken,  or  was  breaking  into  th%e  world,  in  the  life  and 
cross  of  Jesus,  which  all  the  known  causations  of  the 
land,  and  sea,  and  air,  and  sky,  can  but  feebly  repre- 
sent. The  difficulty  appears  to  be  that  no  force-figures 
can  be  forcible  enough,  to  express  the  wondrously  di- 
vine, all-renovating,  all-revolutionizing,  moral  power  of 
God  in  the  gospel  of  his  Son. 

I  have  only  to  add,  as  a  considerable  argument  for 
the  moral  view  of  Christ  and  his  sacrifice,  in  distinc- 
Thedayofhis  tion  from  all  others,  that;  the  time  of 
coming  coincides,  fog  comiDg  coincides  with  this  only. 
Had  he  come,  having  it  for  his  principal  object  to 
satisfy  God's  justice  and  be  substituted,  in  that  man- 
ner, for  the  release  of  transgression,  there  appears 
to  be  no  reason  why  he  should  have  delayed  his 
coming  for  so  many  ages.  If  the  effect  was  to  be  on 
God,  God  was  just  as  capable,  at  the  very  first,  of  feel- 
ing the  worth  of  his  sacrifice,  as  at  any  time  afterward ; 
and,  if  this  was  to  be  the  salvation,  why  should  the 
salvation  be  delayed  ?  But  if  he  came  to  be  the  moral 
power  of  God  on  men,  nothing  is  so  difficult  as  the  due 
development  of  any  such  moral  power;  because  the 
capacity,  or  necessary  receptivity  for  it,  has  itself  to  be 
prepared.  Thus,  if  Christ  had  come  to  the  monster  age 
before  the  flood,  when  raw  force  was  every  thing,  and 
moral  greatness  nothing,  his  death  and  passion,  all  the 


CHAP.HI.     IN   WORKING  SUCH  RECOVERY.  183 

significance  of  his  suffering  and  sacrifice,  would  have 
been  lost,  and  probably  would  not  even  have  been  pre- 
served in  the  remembrance  of  history.  The  world  was 
too  coarse,  and  too  deep  in  the  force-principle  of  vio- 
lence^ to  apprehend  a  visitation  so  thoughtful  and  deep 
in  the  merit  of  character.  There  was  no  room  or  re- 
ceptivity, as  yet,  for  Christ  in  the  world.  A  long 
drawn  scheme  of  economy  is  previously  needed,  to 
prepare  that  receptivity ;  a  drill  of  outward  sacrifice 
and  ceremony,  a  providential  milling  of  captivities,  de- 
liverances, wars,  plagues,  and  other  public  judgments; 
commemorated  in  hymns,  interpreted  and  set  home  by 
the  preaching  of  a  prophet  ministrj^;  till  finally  there  is 
a  culture  of  mind,  or  of  moral  perception  produced,  that 
is  sufficiently  advanced,  to  receive  the  meaning  of 
Christ  in  his  sacrifice,  and  allow  him  to  get  an  accepted 
place  in  the  moral  impressions  of  mankind.  Conceiv- 
ing, in  this  manner,  that  he  came  to  be  the  moral  power 
of  God  on  character,  there  is  good  and  sufficient  reason 
for  his  delay.  He  came  as  soon  as  he  could,  or,  as  the 
Scripture  says,  "in  the  fullness  of  time;"  came  in  fact, 
at  the  very  earliest  moment,  when  it  was  possible  to  get 
hold  of  history. 

Indeed,  so  very  slow  is  the  world  in  getting  ready  for 
the  due  impression  of  what  lies  in  moral  power,  that 
only  a  very  partial  opening  to  it  is  prepared  even  now. 
The  world  is  still  too  coarse,  too  deep  in  sense  and  the 
force-principle,  to  feel,  in  any  but  a  very  small  degree, 
the  moral  power  of  God  in  the  Christian  history. 
Slowly  and  sluggishly  this  higher  sense  is  unfolding, 


184  HE  IS  TO  BE  GOD'S  POWER,   ETC.     PART  II. 

but  there  is  a  perceptible  advance,  and  we  may  antici- 
pate the  day,  when  there  will  be  a  sense  opened  wide 
enough  for  Christ,  in  his  true  power,  to  enter ;  thus  to 
fill,  and  new-create  in  good,  all  souls  that  live.  Then, 
and  not  till  then,  will  it  be  known  how  grand  a  fact  the 
moral  power  of  God  in  the  person  of  his  Son  may  be. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

HOW  HE  BECOMES  SO   GREAT  A  'POWER. 

IN  his  descent  to  the  flesh,  we  might  naturally  expect 
that  Christ  would  bring  all  deific  perfections  with  him, 
and  have  them  expressed  in  his  person.  And  this, 
indeed,  is  true ;  but  with  the  large  qualification  that  they 
will  be  expressed  only  by  degrees,  and  under  condi- 
tions of  time ;  that  is,  under  such  laws  of  expression 
as  pertain  to  humanity.  In  one  view,  God  is  emptied 
of  his  perfections  in  becoming  incarnate,  and  has  them 
all  to  acquire  and  bring  into  evidence,  by  the  same  pro- 
cess of  right  living  that  obtains  character  and  weight 
for  men.  Otherwise  the  incarnation  would  be  no  real 
fact.  It  must  be  with  Christ  as  with  men,  and  moral 
power,  as  we  commonly  use  the  term,  among  men,  is 
the  power  that  a  man  finally  gets,  by  the  courses  and 
achievements  of  a  great  and  worthy  life,  to  impress  and 
sway  other  men.  The  subject  may  be  dead,  or  he  may 
be  still  alive;  his  name  awakens  homage,  inspires, 
becomes  an  argument  in  itself,  by  which  opposition  is 
concluded,  or  assent  determined ;  all  because  of  some 
great  virtue,  or  victory,  or  championship  of  right  and 
beneficence,  accomplished  in  his  life.  It  is  a  power 
cumulative  in  its  very  nature.  Once  the  man  had  it 

16* 


186  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

not;  as  regards  any  such  thing,  he  was  virtually 
nobody.  But  the  process  of  his  life  was  such  that 

Moral  power  is  power  grew  up  with  it,  rolled  up  into 
cumulative.  volume  and  majesty,  in  the  facts  and 
doings  of  it.  If  he  was  a  benefactor,  like  Howard,  his 
name  became  a  power,  through  the  trains  of  good,  led 
on  by  his  works  and  sacrifices.  If  he  was  a  saint,  like 
Savonarola  or  George  Fox,  his  inspirations  obtained  for 
him  the  homage  due  to  God's  oracle.  If  he  was  a 
preacher,  like  Whitfield,  the  immense  crowds,  conquered 
by  his  words,  prepared  other  and  greater  crowds,  to  be 
half-conquered  even  before  he  spoke.  If  he  was  a 
hero,  proved  by  many  righteous  victories,  his  soldiers 
went  to  the  fight,  with  victory  perched  on  their  ban- 
ners beforehand.  In  all  such  examples,  we  perceive 
that  moral  power  is  a  growth,  and  the  result  of  a  pro- 
cess. It  is  what  a  man  once  had  not,  but  now  has.  It 
was  not  in  his  nature,  as  a  child,  or  a  youth,  or  even  as 
a  man ;  but  it  has  been  conquered,  or  obtained  by  the 
conduct  of  his  life.  We  sometimes  say  that  it  is  con- 
tributed by  the  admiration  of  men,  but  it  is  not  con- 
tributed gratis ;  it  is  won  by  deeds  and  represented  by 
facts. 

And  this,  exactly,  is  what  we  are  to  understand  by 
the  moral  power  of  God  in  the  gospel  of  his  Son.  It 

Attribute  power  *s  a  new  kind  of  power — the  greatest  and 
is  different.  most  sovereign  power  we  know — which 
God  undertakes  to  have  by  obtaining  it,  under  the  hu- 
man laws  and  methods.  Hence  the  incarnation.  God 
had  a  certain  kind  of  power  before ;  viz.,  that  which 


CHAP.  IV.  so    GREAT    A    POWER.  187 

• 

may  be  called  attribute  power.  By  attributes  we  mean 
what  we  attribute  to  God,  when  we  think  God,  or  un- 
fold our  idea  of  God  as  the  Absolute  Being.  As  being 
infinite  and  absolute,  we  ascribe  to  him  certain  attri- 
butes, or  perfections.  Such  attributes,  or  perfections, 
are  a  kind  of  abstract  excellence,  such  as  we  bring  out, 
or  generate,  by  our  own  intellectual  refinements  on  the 
idea  of  God,  to  answer  to  our  own  intellectual  demands. 
Still,  as  God  is  infinite,  the  perfections  are  distant.  We 
hardly  dare  think  them,  if  we  could,  into  our  finite 
molds.  We  almost  reason  them  away.  Thus  God,  we 
say,  is  omnipotent,  therefore  he  will  bring  to  pass  ex- 
actly all  that  he  desires ;  and  does,  in  fact,  desire  noth- 
ing but  what  comes  to  pass.  Again,  God  is  eternally 
sovereign ;  therefore  he  regrets  nothing,  as  we  do ;  for 
what  he  wills  he  does.  Again,  God  is  omniscient, 
knowing  every  thing  beforehand ;  therefore  every 
thing  is  immovably  fixed  beforehand.  Still  again,  God 
is  infinitely  happy ;  therefore  he  is  impassible  and  can 
not  suffer  in  feeling  any  way.  Yet  once  more,  God  is 
immutably  just;  and  must  therefore  have  his  justice 
satisfied  by  the  necessary  quantum  of  suffering.  And 
so  it  turns  out  that,  in  making  up  an  attribute  power, 
we  very  nearly  think  away,  or  annihilate,  all  that  cre- 
ates an  effective  impress  on  our  sentiment  and  character. 
We  make  him  great,  but  we  also  make  him  thin  and 
cold.  We  feel  him  as  a  platitude,  more  than  as  a  per- 
son. His  great  attributes  became  dry  words ;  a  kind 
of  milky- way  over  our  heads;  vast  enough  in  the 
matter  of  extension,  but  evanescently  dim  to  our  feeling. 


188  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

This  result  had  been  mitigated,  somewhat,  by  his 
works  and  word  and  Providence,  before  the  coming 
of  Christ.  But  the  tendency  still  was  to  carry  back  all 
the  more  genial  impressions  thus  unfolded,  and  merge 
them  in  the  attribute-power,  by  which,  as  an  unseen, 
infinite  being,  we  had  before  contrived  to  think  and  to 
Christincamated  measui>e  nis  character.  Till,  finally,  in 
to  obtain  moral  the  fullness  of  time,  he  is  constrained  to 
institute  a  new  movement  on  the  world, 
in  the  incarnation  of  his  Son.  The  undertaking  is  to 
obtain,  through  him,  and  the  facts  and  processes  of  his 
life,  a  new  kind  of  power;  viz.,  moral  power;  the 
same  that  is  obtained  by  human  conduct  under  human 
methods.  It  will  be  divine  power  still,  only  it  will  not 
be  attribute  power.  That  is  the  power  of  his  idea. 
This  new  power  is  to  be  the  power  cumulative,  gained 
by  Him  among  men,  as  truly  as  they  gain  it  with  each 
other.  Only  it  will  turn  out,  in  the  end,  to  be  the 
grandest,  closest  to  feeling,  most  impressive,  most  soul- 
renovating,  and  spiritually  sublime  power  that  was  ever 
obtained  in  this  or  any  other  world. 

Hence  that  peculiar  and  continually  recurring  set  of 
expressions  in  the  New  Testament  which  appear,  in  one 
form  or  another,  to  attribute  so  much  to  the  name  of 
Jesus.  For  if  we  can  rightly  distinguish  between  a 
name  and  a  fame,  if  we  can  exclude  the  airy  fictions  of 
repute  and  coveted  applause,  conceiving  that  the  name 
obtained  by  Jesus  signifies  the  condensed  reality  of  all 
that  he  is,  no  power  will  be  so  genuine,  or  vital,  or  so 
like  a  sun-rising  on  transgression. 


CHAP.  IV.  so    GREAT    A   POWER.  189 

There  will,  accordingly,  be  distinguished,  more  or 
less  clearly,  in  all  the  varied  uses  referred  to,  some  no- 
tion or  associated  impression  of  power :  „,, 

The  "name"  of 

as  if  there  were  embodied,  somehow,  in  Jesus  is  the  power 
this  name  Jesus,  a  fund  of  universal  hcobtains- 
soul-help ;  or  as  if,  being  in  this  name  were  the  same  as 
to  be  in  a  really  divine  element  of  good.  This  too,  for 
the  manifest  reason,  that  the  whole  personal  life-history 
of  Jesus,  all  that  he  was,  felt,  suffered,  and  did,  is  gath- 
ered into  it,  and  was  originally  designed  to  be,  that  he 
might  be  the  new  moral  power  of  God.  Thus,  to  glo- 
rify this  name  and  make  it  such  a  power  is  seen  to  be 
God's  purpose  from  the  first.  Which  purpose  glimmers 
dimly  in  the  direction,  "  they  shall  call  his  name  Jesus ;" 
for  it  is  to  be  a  saving  name.  And  again  it  appears 
more  visibly  afterwards,  when  he  answers  the  prayer  of 
Jesus,  "  Father  glorify  [in  me]  thy  name,"  by  a  voice 
out  of  heaven,  saying — "  I  have  both  glorified  it  and 
will  glorify  it  again."  And  again,  at  a  still  later  period, 
when  his  work  is  complete,  and  he  gives  it  to  his  apostle 
to  say,  magnifying  both  the  power  and  the  name  together 
— "showing  us  the  exceeding  greatness  of  his  power  to 
usward  who  believe,  by  setting  him  [in  our  mortal  ap- 
prehension] above  all  principalities,  and  powers,  and 
might,  and  dominion,  and  every  name  that  is  named, 
not  only  in  this  world,  but  in  that  which  is  to  come  " 

Christ,  also,  we  can  easily  perceive,  has  a  like  im- 
pression of  God's  purpose  in  his  life ;  as  when  speaking 
of,  or  to,  or  before,  his  disciples,  he  says — "  gathered  in 
my  name;"  "ask  in  my  name;"  "cast  out  devils  in 


190  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

my  name;"  " a  chosen  vessel  in  my  name;"  " I  have 
manifested  thy  name." 

The  apostles  coming  after  are  even  more  explicit,  as 

we  should  expect  them  to  be.     They  even  dare  to 

speak  of  this  great  name  as  a  name  ob- 

How    the    apos- 
tles do  every  thing   tained — "Being  made  so  much  better 
in  this  name.  than  the  angel8j  ag  he  hathj  for  fa  heri- 

tage, obtained  a  more  excellent  name  than  they."  They 
are  "  baptized  "  in  it.  They  are  "justified  in  "  it.  They 
"  do  all  for  "  it.  They  "  are  reproached  for  "  it.  They 
"  teach  in  his  name."  They  "  preach  it  boldly."  They 
promise  salvation  to  such  as  "believe  in  it."  They  " have 
life  through"  it.  They  work  miracles  and  say,  "by 
the  name  of  Jesus  this  man  is  made  whole."  Having  it 
consciously  upon  them,  in  their  inmost  feeling,  they  "hold 
it  fast,"  and  are  "  hated  of  all  men  for  "  it.  Every  one 
"  that  nameth  it "  they  conceive  must "  depart  from  all  in- 
iquity." And,  last  of  all,  they  read  this  name  "in  the 
forehead  "  of  the  glorified.  How  could  it  be  otherwise 
when  God  Himself  comes  into  human  life,  and  makes 
himself  a  name  there,  by  human  acts,  in  human  molds 
of  conduct,  that  represents  even  the  pleroma  of  his 
divine  perfections. 

Accordingly  when,  Peter,  another  apostle,  declares 
that  "  there  is  none  other  name  under  heaven  given 
among  men,  whereby  we  can  be  saved,"  we  shall  not 
take  the  "  name  whereby  "  as  a  cold,  theoretic,  far-oif 
method  of  reference,  to  some  theologic  matter  of  judi- 
cial satisfaction,  but  as  meaning  just  what  the  language 
implies ;  viz.,  power— the  power  of  God  unto  salvation. 


CHAP.  IY.  So    GREAT    A    POWER.  191 

We  only  recognize  in  his  language  the  fact,  so  abun- 
dantly testified  in  all  the  other  terms  referred  to,  that 
the  incarnate  ministry  and  life  of  Christ  are  designed 
of  God,  to  obtain,  and  have,  in  fact,  obtained  a  new 
moral  power  for  the  regeneration  of  lost  men.  What 
we  say,  at  this  point,  is  not  theory  but  is  constantly  af- 
firmed by  the  New  Testament  Scriptures. 

Assuming,  now,  this  view  of  Christ  and  his  gospel, 
it  remains  to  go  forward  and  trace  the  process  of  his 
life ;  showing  how,  and  by  what  methods,  and  stages, 
this  grand,  cumulative,  power  is  rolled  up  into  the  requi- 
site body  and  volume. 

Of  course,  it  will  be  understood,  that  Christ  is  not 
aiming  directly  at  the  obtaining  of  such  a  name,  or 
such  a  power  of  impression.  He  can  not,  now  he  obtains 
of  course,  be  ignorant  of  the  result  to  be  the  name- 
perfected  thus  in  his  life.  ISTot  even  a  man  of  ordinary 
intelligence  will  be  ignorant  of  the  respect  and  homage 
that  must  be  obtained,  by  what  is  morally  great  and 
good  in  action.  But  that  is  not  the  motive  for  such 
action.  It  was  not  with  Christ.  As  some  great  hero 
thinks  of  his  country,  when  he  takes  the  field  to  serve 
his  country,  so  Christ  thought  of  the  world  to  be  saved, 
when  he  came  to  save  the  world.  He  came  with  the 
lost  world  upon  his  feeling,  gave  himself  to  it  in  sacri- 
fice, bore  it  in  vicarious  sacrifice,  plead  with  it,  suffered 
for  it,  made  himself  of  no  reputation,  took  upon  him 
the  form  of  a  servant  and  a  servant's  labor ;  whereupon 
God  hath  highly  exalted  him  and  given  him  a  name 


192  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  IL 

that  is  above  every  name,  a  power  that  is  itself  salva- 
tion. The  moral  power  obtained  is  a  result  and  not  any 
direct  motive. 

How  then  does  it  come  ? — let  us  see  if  we  can  trace 
the  process.  When  the  holy  child  is  born,  he  has  no 

Nothing  in  his  moral  power  at  all.  The  halo  which 
name  at  the  first.  t^e  painters  show  about  his  head  is  not 
there.  He  is  simply  the  child  of  two  very  humble  peo- 
ple, in  a  very  mean  provincial  town.  There  was  a 
good  deal  more  circumstance  and  prospect  in  Washing- 
ton's infancy  than  in  his ;  and  yet  the  moral  power  of 
that  little  one's  name,  George,  had  nothing  of  the  ring 
that  a  great  life  and  history  will  afterwards  give  it. 
Nor  is  it  any  thing  if  the  name  is  called  Immanuel ;  no- 
body will  see  any  meaning  in  that,  at  present.  The 
meaning  itself  is  yet  to  be  obtained. 

There  had  heen  some  remarkable  prophecies  over  the 
child,  not  much  regarded,  of  course,  till  afterwards. 
A  few  very  pleasant  facts  are  given  concerning  his 
childhood  and  youth,  which  will  signify  a  great  deal 
more,  as  recollections,  than  they  do  to  present  observa- 
tion. His  look  and  manner,  as  he  grows  up,  are  win- 
ning to  every  body.  He  is  subject  to  his  parents  and 
a  model  of  filial  duty.  His  custom  is  to  be  always 
at  the  synagogue  worship.  On  a  certain  occasion, 
when  he  is  but  twelve  years  old,  he  astonishes  the  doc- 
tors of  the  temple,  by  his  wonderful  questions ;  and 
there  it  is  that  he  drops  the  remarkable  intimation,  spe- 
cially noted  by  his  mother,  that  he  "must  be  about  his 
Father's  business;"  in  which,  as  we  can  see,  he  already 


CHAP.  IV.  so    GREAT    A    POWER.  193 

begins  to  be  a  little  conscious  of  his  great  calling; 
which  makes  it  all  the  more  remarkable,  that  he  still 
struggles  on  eighteen  years  longer,  hurried  by  no  for- 
wardness, or  impatience,  till  the  full  idea  of  his  great 
ministry  takes  possession  of  his  life.  During  this  whole 
period,  he  confesses  no  sin,  and,  as  far  as  we  can  judge, 
rectifies  no  mistake ;  and,  if  these  negative  facts  had 
been  noted  by  any  body,  as  plainly  they  could  not  be, 
his  piety  would  certainly  have  been  seen  to  be  of  a  most 
singular  and  even  superhuman  order. 

On  the  whole,  it  does  not  appear  that,  previous  to 
entering  on  his  public  ministry,  when  he  was  thirty 
years  old,  he  has  done  any  thing  more  The  name  is  not 
than  to  beautifully  and  exactly  fulfill  obtained  before  his 
his  duties.  His  name  is  good,  true,  ' 
lovely ;  but  as  far  as  possible  from  being  a  name  above 
every  name.  A  certain  moral  power  is  felt  in  him,  of 
course,  by  those  who  are  with  him,  but  what  he  is  to 
be,  in  this  respect,  is,  as  yet,  quite  hidden  from  discovery. 

But  the  time  has  now  come  for  his  great  ministry  to 
begin.  The  dim  presentiment  of  his  work,  which  he 
called  his  "  Father's  business  "  opens  into  a  definite,  set- 
tled, consciousness  of  his  call.  As  it  were  by  the  reve- 
lation of  the  Spirit,  he  clearly  perceives  what  he  is  to 
do,  and  what  to  suffer ;  that  he  is  to  go  down  into  the 
hell  of  the  world's  corporate  evil,  to  be  wounded  and 
galled  by  the  world's  malice,  and  bear  the  burden  of 
the  world's  undoing  as  a  charge  upon  his  love ;  and  so, 
by  agonies  of  sacrifice,  including  a  most  bitter  death,  to 
reconcile  men  to  God  and  establish  the  eternal  kingdom 

17 


194  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

of  God  in  their  hearts.  The  work  attracts  him,  and  yet 
his  soul,  or  at  least  his  natural  human  feeling,  recoils. 
Smitten,  as  it  were,  by  a  kind  of  horror,  he  is  hurried 
off  into  the  wilderness,  to  wrestle  with  his  temptations ; 
groaning  there  alone,  under  the  heavy  load  he  is  to 
bear,  and  bowing  his  reluctant  humanity  to  the  call1;  by 
the  discipline  of  fasting.  He  comes  out  victorious,  but 
as  a  victor  spent.  The  angels  of  God  recruit  him  by 
their  tender  and  cheering  ministry,  and  he  goes  to  his 
work. 

No  man  of  the  race,  it  is  quite  safe  to  say,  ever  went 
to  the  calling  of  his  life  against  impediments  of  natural 
sensibility  so  appalling.  Men  do  often  make  great  and 
heroic  sacrifices  in  a  cause  already  undertaken,  but  he 
undertakes  the  forlornest,  most  appalling  sacrifice,  fully 
perceiving  what  it  is  to  be  beforehand.  Men  have  the 
brave  will  raised  in  them  afterwards,  by  the  heat  of  en- 
counter ;  he  has  his  victory  at  the  beginning,  alone,  in 
a  desert,  where  only  love  and  God,  in  the  moods  of 
silence,  come  to  his  aid.  In  this  simple  beginning  of 
Christ,  there  is  character  enough  to  create  a  moral 
power  never  before  conceived,  never  since  realized. 
But  it  does  not  appear  that  even  the  facts  of  his  tempta- 
tion were  made  known,  till  some  time  after — when,  or 
how,  we  can  only  guess.  He  goes  into  his  work,  there- 
fore, as  a  merely  common  man,  a  Nazarene  carpenter, 
respected  for  nothing,  save  as  he  compels  respect  by 
his  works  and  his  words. 

Meantime  John  has  been  testifying,  as  a  prophet,  of 
another,  who  is  to  come,  or  is  even  now  at  hand,  whose 


CiiAP.  IV  so    GREAT    A    POWER.  195 

shoes  even  he  is  not  worthy  to  untie,  and  by  whom  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  to  be  set  up  on  earth.  And  this 
other,  viz.,  Jesus,  comes  to  him  shortly  after  to  be  bap- 
tized ;  when  he  breaks  out,  in  prophetic  vision,  as  soon 
as  he  perceives  him  coming — "  Behold  the  Lamb  of 
God  that  taketh  away  the  sins  of  the  world."  The 
consecrating  dove  lights  upon  him  in  his  baptism,  and  a 
voice  out  of  heaven  declares — •"  This  is  my  beloved  Son 
in  whom  I  am  well  pleased."  And  yet  even  John  is  so 
little  impressed,  or  so  little  believes  in  what  he  hears, 
shortly  after,  of  his  miracles  and  his  doctrine,  that  he 
sends  to  inquire,  as  if  he  might  still  be  only  an  ordinary 
man,  possibly  an  impostor,  "  art  thou  he  that  should 
come,  or  look  we  for  another?"  As  yet  he  has  not  made 
impression  enough  for  God's  love  and  power  by  his 
ministry,  beautiful  and  wonderful  as  it  is,  to  even 
hold  a  prophet's  opinion  of  him  up  to  the  pitch  of  his 
own  prophetic  testimony ! 

But  he  goes  on  with  his  ministry  for  three  years ; 
traveling  on  foot,  sleeping  in  desert  places  and  upon  the 
mountain  tops,  associating  mostly  with  HOW  the  ministry 
the  poor  and  humble,  who  have  scarcely  soes  on 
cultivation  enough  to  yield  him  any  fit  return  of  sym- 
pathy, or  even  to  be  duly  impressed  by  his  miracles. 
The  learned  and  select  are  alienated  from  him,  partly 
for  this  reason.  They  deny  his  miracles,  or  they 
change  them  openly  to  his  conspiracy  with  devils. 

His  doctrine  is  wonderful  to  every  body — what  can 
be  more  wonderful  than  his  sermon  on  the  mount? 
The  people  were  astonished  and  rightly ;  for  there  was 


196  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  IL 

never  any  such  utterance  in  the  world  before.  There 
was  no  learning,  no  cabalistic  juggle  in  his  words ;  he 
taught  them  "  as  one  having  authority  and  not  as  the 
scribes."  This  kind  of  impression  was  always  made  by 
him,  and  the  puzzle  was  that  a  man  who  had  never 
learned — the  son  of  a  mean  provincial,  in  a  mean  pro- 
vincial town — could  discourse  with  such  intelligence,  in 
a  manner  so  nearly  divine.  A  company  of  bailiffs  sent 
out  to  arrest  him,  just  before  the  close  of  his  ministry, 
were  as  profoundly  impressed  by  his  manner  and  words 
as  if  the  angel  in  the  sun  had  spoken  to  them,  and 
could  only  go  back  and  report — "Never  man  spake 
like  this  man."  And  yet  it  does  not  appear  that  Christ 
grew,  at  all,  on  the  public  sentiment,  by  means  of  his 
discourses.  He  only  mystified,  a  little,  the  public  feel- 
ing, and  made  himself  a  character  about  as  much  more 
suspicious  and  dangerous. 

A  few  persons  of  a  specially  honest  and  fair  tempera- 
ment were  so  wrought  upon,  by  his  miracles,  and  man- 
ners, and  words,  as  to  feel  the  impression  of  some  very 
strange,  or  even  sacred  power  in  his  life;  Mary  and 
Martha,  for  example,  and  the  centurion,  and  the  two 
senators  Nicodemus  and  Joseph,  and  probably  all  his 
apostles — not  excluding  even  Pilate,  who  was  evidently 
shaken  out  of  all  confidence,  by  the  sense  he  had  of 
some  strange  quality,  in  the  manner  and  bearing  of  the 
victim  he  is  compelled  to  sacrifice.  And  yet  there  was 
a  certain  wavering,  probably,  in  all  these  minds,  as  if 
they  could  not  imagine  him,  or  guess,  after  all,  how  he 
might  turn  out.  Their  misgivings  half  took  away  what 


CHAP.  IV.  SO    GREAT    A    POWER.  197 

would  have  been  their  opinions.  What  they  felt  in 
him,  therefore,  was  not  so  much  a  power  as  a  possibility 
of  power.  Nothing  was  immovably  fastened,  save, 
perhaps,  in  the  centurion,  or  the  woman  that  came  with 
her  box  of  ointment,  and,  it  may  be,  one  or  two  other  of 
his  disciples.  Great  things  have  been  done  by  him, 
wonderful  beauties  of  feeling  unfolded,  and  yet  all  these 
are  felt  dubiously  under  a  kind  of  peradventure. 

And  the  reason  plainly  enough  is,  that  no  point  of 
view,  as  respects  his  person,  has  yet  been  attained  to, 
that  will  verify  the  facts  and  impressions  of  his  life. 
His  friends  think  he  is  the  Messiah,  but  they  have  only 
the  faintest  notions  who  the  Messiah  is,  or  is  to  be. 
His  person  is  not  conceived,  and  so  it  results  that  his 
doings  make  a  seemingly  rough  compound  of  strange 
things,  jumbled  together  in  a  kind  of  moral  confusion 
that  has  really  no  right  to  be  very  impressive. 

As  we  go  back  to  inventory  the  matter  of  his  life,  we 
find  some  things  that  are  wonderfully  sublime,  some 
that  are  deep  in  the  spirit  of  wisdom,  sublime  and 
some  that  repel  and  hold  aloof,  some  that  wise,  and  so  far 
bear  a  grotesque  look,  some  that  are  at-  impre 
tractive  and  subduing  to  feeling  as  nothing  else  ever 
was,  and  some  that  even  discourage  confidence. 

The  sublime  things  are  such  as  these ;  the  virtue  that 
went  out  of  him,  when  faith  touched  the  hem  of  his 
garment ;  the  raising  of  the  widow's  son ;  the  healing 
of  the  lepers ;  the  voice  out  of  heaven ;  the  stilling  of 
the  sea ;  the  transfiguration,  and  all  the  matter  of  his 
last  discourses  and  prayer  as  given  by  John.  In  these 


198  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  n. 

facts  the  glory  of  deity  and  of  heaven  appear  to  be  let 
into  the  world,  and  made  visible  in  it.  But  they  were 
witnessed  only  here  and  there,  and,  for  the  most  part, 
by  different  classes  of  persons;  creating  rather  mazes 
of  wonder,  than  a  settled  feeling  of  homage  and  awe. 

The  wise  things,  such  as  indicated  even  a  marvelous 
diplomatic  talent,  in  the  good  sense  of  the  term,  were 
his  answer  to  the  Pharisees,  who  came  to  entangle  with 
the  government — "Bender  therefore  unto  Caesar  the 
things  that  are  Cesar's;"  the  confusion  he  brought 
upon  the  chief  priests  and  elders,  coming  with  a  like 
artful  design,  when  he  answered  their  question — "  By 
what  authority,"  by  another  question — "The  baptism 
of  John,  whence  was  it ;"  his  reply  to  the  puzzle  or 
catch  of  the  Sadducees — "  Therefore,  in  the  resurrection, 
whose  wife  shall  she  be,"  by  his  Scripture  citation  and 
his  inference  from  it — "  I  am  the  God  of  Abraham,  and 
the  God  of  Isaac,  the  God  of  Jacob ;  God  is  not  the 
God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the  living ;"  and  more  than  all 
by  his  fearfully  impressive  reserve,  and  the  brief,  but 
immensely  significant  intimations  he  gave  to  Pilate 
about  his  kingship,  as  the  king  of  truth ;  taking,  in 
fact,  all  courage  out  of  the  man,  by  the  superstitious 
dread  awakened,  in  his  feeling.  No  teacher,  prophet, 
or  champion  of  truth,  ever  evinced  such  complete  in- 
sight of  men,  or  was  ever  able  to  reduce  them  to  utter 
confusion  so  easily,  by  his  mastery  of  their  motives  and 
points  of  weakness.  His  profoundly  artful  enemies  in 
fact,  were  all  in  sunlight  before  him. 

The  points  in  which  he  repelled  and  set  aloof  multi- 


CHAP.  IV.  SO    GREAT    A    POWER.  199 

tudes  that  came  to  be  his  clients  and  followers  were  such 
as  these — he  would  not  have  a  partisan,  and  as  most 
men  expect  to  be  taken  as  partisans. 

Sometimes  he 

when  they  adhere  to  another,  they  were  repelled  by  his 
chilled  and  could  not  long  follow  him ;  manner' 
he  offended  their  Jewish  prejudices  without  scruple  in 
the  matter  of  the  Sabbath,  and  also  in  the  matter  of 
their  exclusive  nationality  by  the  declaration  of  a  uni- 
versal kingdom,  where  the  men  of  all  nations  should 
come  from  the  east,  and  the  west,  and  the  north,  and 
the  south,  and  sit  down  with  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Ja- 
cob ;  he  turned  the  preposterous  learning  of  the  law- 
yers and  scribes  to  derision  ;  he  galled  the  consciences 
of  many  who  were  righteous  in  the  law,  by  his  terrible 
exposures  of  -their  motives  and  their  hearts ;  he  made 
God  fearfully  great  and  holy  by  his  doctrine  of  future 
punishment ;  his  terms  of  discipleship  were  uninviting 
and  severe — ye  shall  be  baptized  with  my  baptism, 
hated  of  all  men  for  my  name's  sake ;  take  up  your 
cross  and  follow  me ;  if  any  man  hate  not  father  and 
mother  yea  and  his  own  life  also  he  can  not  be  my  dis- 
ciple ;  resist  not  evil ;  consent  to  serve  and  suffer,  even 
as  the  Son  of  man  came  to  minister,  and  give  his  life  a 
ransom  for  many.  He  made  nothing  of  the  popular 
favor,  nothing  of  gaining  or  retaining  friends,  which, 
though  it  was  one  of  the  sublimities,  even  of  his  char- 
acter, as  regarded  by  us,  was  in  fact  only  a  continual 
offense  to  the  men  of  his  time. 

Some  few  of  the  facts  of  his  life  bore  a  grotesque 
look,  at  the  time,  and  could  easily  be  turned  to  ridicule, 


200  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

as  indeed  they  have  been  since.  Thus  when  the  woman 
is  brought  before  him  craftily,  by  her  accusers,  to 
Sometimes  he  obtain  his  judgment  on  her  sin,  he  writes 
was  grotesque,  abstractedly  on  the  ground,  lifting  him- 
self up  at  length  to  shoot  in  his  bolt — "  let  him  that  is 
without  sin  cast  the  first  stone " — and  then  stooping 
down  again  to  write  on  the  ground  as  before.  This 
would  be  ridiculed  in  a  man,  a.s  a  figure  of  mere  hocus- 
pocus.  And  yet  the  mystery  of  the  manner,  the  silence, 
the  abstraction,  roused  the  consciences  of  the  accusers 
to  such  a  degree,  that  they  heard  even  terrible  thunders 
within,  and  shortly  drew  off,  one  by  one,  and  left  him 
quite  alone.  No  most  eloquent  sermon  could  have 
done  as  much.  No  stroke  of  natural  eloquence  was 
ever  more  impressive.  We  have  also  what  some  have 
called  another  grotesque  figure  in  his  triumphal  entry 
into  Jerusalem.  Multitudes  go  forth  to  meet  him, 
branches  of  palm-trees  are  thrown  in  his  way,  as  if  it 
were  the  day  of  his  crowning,  and  the  great  concourse 
of  the  people  and  the  children  in  the  temple,  after  he 
arrives,  fill  the  air,  as  it  were  by  some  outburst  of  in- 
spiration, with  the  cry,  "Hosanna  to  the  Son  of  David! 
Blessed  is  he  that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord !" 
And  yet  he  comes  riding  upon  an  ass !  Neither  does  it 
raise  at  all  the  dignity  of  his  figure,  that  he  fulfills  a 
propliecy;  for  that  is  probably  not  observed  at  the 
time.  Besides  a  prophecy  that  requires  the  great  Mes- 
siah to  celebrate  his  triumph  in  such  a  figure  puts  in- 
spiration itself  under  a  ban  of  derision,  till  we  are  able 
to  see  as  could  not  be  seen  till  some  time  after,  how 


CHAP.  IV.  SO    GREAT    A    POWER.  201 

this  outward  type  represents  a  king  riding  into  power 
among  men,  through  a  suffering  and  sadly  humiliated 
life.  What  livery  or  mounting  then  will"  he  most  fitly 
take  for  his  type,  in  such  a  procession  ?  on  what  shall 
he  ride,  but  on  one  of  the  humblest  and  least  airy-gaited 
of  the  animals  ?  faiiA 

The  facts,  in  which  he  drew  on  human  feeling  by  the 
loving  and  subduing  energy  of  his  own,  compose  the 
staple,  we  may  almost  say,  of  his  life.  d9ta/"  <-4 

A  1 1  i  •     i       , .  .      ,    .  His  tenderness. 

All  his  healings,  raised  in  dignity  by  the  £4*  0"*M 

manifestly  divine  power  in  which  they  are  wrought, 
display  such  assiduity  of  kindness  and  devotion  to  the 
forlornest  conditions  and  bitterest  pains  of  a  world 
under  sin,  as  to  make  up  a  kind  of  gospel  in  the  plane 
of  bodily  treatment ;  engaging  most  tenderly  just  those 
fallen  sensibilities  that  must  be  engaged,  and  yet  could 
not,  by  mere  demonstrations  of  spiritual  excellence. 
His  union  to  the  poor  in  their  sad  lot,  and  his  beautiful 
tenderness  to  their  wants  and  troubles,  attract  their  per- 
sonal sympathy  and  gratitude  in  the  same  manner.  His 
call,  "  come  unto  me  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy- 
laden  " — it  is  as  if  heaven's  love  to  the  world  were  going 
forth  to  its  weary,  sin-burdened  millions,  from  a  heart 
large  enough  to  contain  them  all,  and  strong  enough  to 
give  them  rest.  His  love  to  little  children  takes  the 
feeling,  not  of  children,  but  of  every  body.  His  do- 
mestic, home-like  feeling  when  with  Mary  and  Martha, 
and  his  yet  more  intensely  human  sensibility,  when  he 
weeps  and  groans  at  the  grave-side  of  their  brother — 
what  a  spell  of  more  than  mortal  majesty  is  there  in 


202  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART IL 

his,  "Lazarus,  come  forth,"  answered  by  the  bursting 
tomb  and  rising  form  of  the  man !  How  touching  his 
delicacy,  when,  by  loving  anticipation,  he  calls  those 
"  friends,"  who  were  not,  and  speaks  of  his  death  as  a 
laying  down  of  his  life  for  his  friends.  What  woman's 
heart  will  not  be  drawn  to  him  by  his  manner  to  Mary, 
when  she  comes  to  him  with  her  box  of  ointment,  and 
when  he  commends  her,  in  her  simple  tribute  of  love, 
as  he  never  did  any  other  of  mankind  ;  telling  her  that 
her  little  gospel  shall  go  down  the  ages  with  his,  to  be 
witnessed  for  a  memorial  of  her.  His  "  one  of  you 
shall  betray  me,"  how  sadly  and  tenderly  is  it  spoken, 
bitter  and  dreadful  as  the  charge  it  lays  most  certainly 
is.  His  whole  farewell  discourse  and  prayer,  as  given 
at  large  by  John,  full  of  the  loftiest  assumptions,  and 
tenderest  promises,  and  lowliest  protestations  of  broth- 
erhood— warm,  and  gentle,  and  strong,  as  inherent 
divinity  should  be — what  greater,  more  subduing  power 
of  love,  on  a  race  broken  loose  from  God,  can  we  even 
imagine  to  be  embodied  in  mortal  words ! 

And  yet,  over  against  all  these  affecting  and  subdu- 
ing demonstrations  in  his  life,  there  were  a  great  many 
Baffled  expecta-  things,   we  know,   which,   at  the  time, 
tion.  seemed  even  to  discourage  confidence  in 

him.  For  example  he  was  baffling  always  the  expecta- 
tions of  his  friends ;  they  could  hardly  name  an  expecta- 
tion, and  they  had  abundance  of  them,  which  he  did 
not  forthwith  take  away,  by  the  notification  of  some 
loss,  or  cross  of  dejection,  which  to  them  wore  a  look 
totally  opposite  to  every  feeling  they  had  respecting  the 


CHAP.  IV.  so    GREAT    A    POWER.  203 

great  Messiah.  Not  to  multiply  instances  in  which  lie 
tried  their  confidence  by  other  methods,  we  pass  di- 
rectly to  the  two  great  closing  facts  of  his  life,  his 
agony  and  crucifixion.  His  work  is  now  done,  and 
nothing  remains,  but  to  let  others  bring  him  to  the  mur- 
derous end  they  are  planning  to  accomplish.  His 
whole  feeling  is  now  loose  upon  him,  respited  by  no 
occupation ;  and  the  dreadful  burdens  of  concern  for 
men,  which  his  divine  love,  too  strong  for  the  body,  rolls 
down  upon  him,  press  him,  as  it  were,  to  the  ground. 
He  beholds  the  corporate  curse,  too,  of  the  world's  evil 
and  madness  just  ready  to  burst  upon  his  person,  and 
though  he  is  not  moved  by  fear,  his  pure  innocence 
struggles  heavily,  with  instinctive  horror,  before  that 
retributive  phrensy,  which  is  going  to  baptize  itself  in 
his  blood !  No  so  grand  mystery  of  divine  feeling  was 
ever  before  or  after  set  before  the  gaze  of  mortals.  But 
his  friends  are  at  no  point  of  view,  where  they  can 
even  begin  to  conceive  it.  His  person,  his  errand,  his 
work,  are  as  yet  wholly  beyond  the  reach  even  of  their 
guesses.  They  have  seen  strange  gleams  of  quality  in 
him,  they  have  been  drawn,  repelled,  impressed,  as- 
tounded and  thoroughly  posed  by  his  mystery,  and  they 
only  try  to  settle  the  whirl  of  their  brain  by  calling  him 
a  great  prophet,  Messiah,  the  Christ,  thinking  him  vir- 
tually always  as  a  man.  And  now,  in  the  agony,  just 
after  his  triumphal  entry  into  the  city,  when  they  look 
to  see  him  rise  and  take  on  his  kingship,  he  collapses  in 
weakness,  without  any  visible  reason ;  falling  on  the 
ground,  groaning,  writhing,  dripping  in  bloody  sweat, 


204  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

like  grapes  in  the  wine-press,  and  calling  on  God  and 
men  for  help,  in  meeting  some  unknown  calamity  that 
he  does  not  name.  It  is  as  if  he  were  just  at  the  end 
of  his  pretensions,  and  struggling,  as  a  convict  might, 
under  his  impending  doom.  All  heart  is  taken  away 
from  his  disciples  at  once ;  their  confidence  in  him  is 
fatally  broken ;  as  we  can  plainly  see  in  the  fact  that 
when  he  is  arrested,  an  hour  or  two  after,  they  forsake 
him  utterly.  Peter  makes  one  or  two  wild  slashes  for 
him  with  his  sword,  and  then  he  too  is  gone ;  only  he 
will  hang  about  the  hall  when  the  trial  goes  on,  care- 
fully denying  his  discipleship. 

In  this  manner  Jesus  goes  to  his  cross ;  and  the  man- 
ner of  his  trial  and  death,  though  supported  with  a 

His  death  takes    transcen(lent   dignity    on   ^18  part,   that 

away  all  confi-  makes  him  even  the  chief  figure  in  the 
scene,  are  yet  so  thoroughly  contemp- 
tuous and  ignominious,  that  the  poor  disciples  are 
obliged  to  confess  to  themselves,  if  not  to  others,  that 
their  much  loved  Messiah  is  now  stamped  as  another 
exploded  pretender !  A  great  reaction  begins  however, 
to  be  visible  in  the  minds  of  the  multitude.  As  the 
Roman  governor  himself,  before  whom  he  was  dragged 
to  a  mock  trial  for  sedition,  was  quite  shaken  out  of 
self-possession,  by  the  dignity  of  his  manner  under  the 
questioning — quailing  visibly  in  the  sense  of  a  mys- 
terious something  in  the  man,  justifying,  equivocating, 
consenting,  condemning,  giving  him  up  to  his  accusers, 
and  washing  his  hands  to  be  clear  of  the  innocent  blood — 
so  in  the  death-scene  of  the  cross,  slave's  death  though 


CHAP.  IY.  so    GREAT    A    POWER.  205 

it  be,  in  the  outward  ignominy  of  the  form,  the  multi- 
tude grow  serious,  and  drop  out  their  jeers  in  awe  of 
his  felt  majesty,  and  finally  go  home,  at  another  swing 
of  oscillation,  smiting  their  breasts  in  dumb  confes- 
sion of  their  murderous  crime.  They  had  expected 
nothing  of  him,  and,  for  just  that  reason,  they  are  the 
more  easily  impressed  by  the  strange  power  in  him — 
under  such  ignominy,  dying  in  such  majesty.  Not  so 
with  his  disciples.  They  had  expected  every  thing  of 
him,  and  now  that  he  is  dead,  every  expectation  is 
blasted.  Even  their  profound  respect,  unwilling  as 
they  are  to  shake  it  off,  and  tenderly  as  they  would  fain 
cling  to  it  still,  is  yet  a  really  blasted  confidence,  now 
that  he  is  dead  under  such  ignominy.  The  two  sena- 
tors, Nicodemus  and  Joseph,  come  with  their  spices,  re- 
vealing what  impressions  they  have  felt  of  his  wonder- 
ful character,  and  daring  now  to  show  their  respect  just 
because  he  is  dead.  Finally,  on  the  third  day  morning, 
it  is  rumored  among  the  disciples  that  he  is  risen,  but 
their  soul  is  under  such  a  weight  of  stupor  that  they 
can  not  believe  it.  And  two  of  them  we  find  trudging 
back  homeward  to  Galilee,  sad,  and  heavy-hearted,  and 
weeping,  as  it  were,  in  doleful  refrain — "  "We  thought 
it  had  been  he  that  should  have  redeemed  Israel  I" 

Where  now  is  the  power  ?    We  have  been  exploring 
a  large  field,  hunting  down  along  the  whole  course  of 
Christ's  life,  expecting,  looking  to  see,   The  power  is  not 
the  great  name  rolled  up  into  volume  and 
majesty,  but  that  any  thing  we  have  found  should  have 

18 


206  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  IL 

power  to  new-create  the  moral  sentiments  and  affinities 
of  mankind,  we  can  hardly  believe.  We  have  seen,  be- 
tween the  infancy  and  the  death,  a  great  many  strange 
things,  and  a  great  many  lovely.  Coruscations  of  glory 
have  been  shooting  out,  all  along  the  remarkable  history. 
But  there  have  been  severities,  and  repellences,  and  dis 
couraging  tokens,  blended  so  continually  with  the  story, 
and  the  end  of  it  is  so  dark,  if  not  weak,  that  we  get  no 
such  densely  compacted  unity  of  impression,  as  belongs 
to  a  great  moral  power.  We  are  put  in  a  maze,  or  even 
a  thrilling  kind  of  mystery,  but  that  all-the- while  cumu- 
lative power  and  weight,  that  great  name  which  is  to 
be  a  gospel  of  life  in  men's  hearts,  does  not  appear. 
And  yet  there  is,  it  may  be,  a  certain  latent  heat  in  the 
facts  we  have  noted,  that  is  finally  to  become  sensible 
heat,  or  blaze  into  splendor.  No  life  becomes  a 
power,  till  we  somehow  get  the  clue  of  it.  A  great 
many  human  characters  are  very  much  of  a  riddle,  till 
they  come  on  to  the  crisis  of  fact,  where  their  objects, 
and  ends,  and  secret  aims,  are  all  discovered,  and  where 
the  seeming  faults  and  contrarieties,  that  were  mysteri- 
ous, get  their  solution — all  to  be  approved  in  the  ad- 
mirable and  wise  unity  that  could  not  sooner  appear. 

Christ  only -differs  here  from  such  mysterious,  pe- 
culiar men,  in  the  fact  that  he  dies  before  the  clue  is 

The  resurrection  given'     Ifc  is  on]J  tne  resurrection  and 

is  the  crisis  of  his   ascension  back  into  glory,  that  bring  us 

out  the    true  point  of  understanding. 

Now  his  most  extraordinary  nature  and  mission,  for  the 

first  time,  come  distinctly  into  thought.     Now,  since  he 


CHAP.  IV.  so    GREAT    A    POWER.  207 

has  gone  up  visibly  into  heaven,  we  begin  to  under- 
stand what  he  meant,  when  he  said,  that  he  came  down 
from  heaven.  We  conceive  him  as  the  incarnate  Word, 
and  begin  to  look  upon  his  glory,  as  the  glory  of  the  only 
begotten  of  the  Father,  full  of  grace  and  truth.  In 
him  now  there  may  be  more  than  we  saw,  a  greater 
name  and  power;  for  the  righteousness  and  love  of 
God  are  in  him,  and  it' puts  a  new  face  on  his  whole 
life,  that  he  is  here  to  save  the  world. 

We  begin  back  now  at  the  point  of  his  infancy  and 
we  follow  him  onward  again,  going  over  all  the  points 
we  have  named,  but  with  results  how  different !  Every 
thing  falls  into  place,  and  eve^  step  onward  is  the  un- 
folding of  power.  The  wonderful  authority  becomes 
more  wonderful ;  in  the  right  of  a  superior  nature  to 
give  it  sanction,  the  severity  becomes  majesty;  know- 
ing who  the  teacher  is,  what  before  was  truth  brightens 
into  a  glorious  wisdom  ;  the  soft-looking  innocence  of 
the  life  becomes  a  kind  of  general  transfiguration  ;  the 
agony,  that  seemed  to  be  wanting  in  magnanimity,  be- 
comes the  love-groan,  as  it  were,  of  his  mysterious 
nature;  the  crushing  defeat  of  the  death  breaks  into 
immortal  victory.  Whatever,  in  a  word,  seemed  weak, 
distracted,  contrarious,  takes  on  a  look  of  progressive 
order,  and  falls  into  chime,  as  a  necessary  factor  in  his 
divinely  great  character.  And  so  the  merely  human 
beginning  grows  into  what  is  more  and  more  visibly 
superhuman,  dying  into  boundlessness  and  glory,  as  the 
sun  when  it  sets  in  the  sea.  The  rising  and  the  ascen- 
sion put  us  on  the  revision,  and  helped  us  to  conceive 


208  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  n. 

who  he  was ;  but  now  he  is  so  great  that  the  rising  does 
not  raise  him  any  more,  and  the  ascension  does  not  glo- 
rify him. 

When  we  conceive  the  glorification  of  Christ,  and  the 
completion  of  his  great  name,  as  a  revision  or  revised 

HOW  revisions  of  imPressi°n)  ^°  which  we  are  incited  by 
character  affect  our  his  resurrection  and  ascension,  we  are 
impressions.  not  without  manv  illustrations.  I  send 

these  sheets  to  the  press,  when  our  great  nation  is  dis- 
solving, as  it  were,  in  its  tears  of  mourning,  for  the  great 
and  true  Father  whom  the  assassins  of  law  and  liberty 
have  sent  on  his  way  to  the  grave.  What  now  do  we 
see  in  him,  but  all  that  is  wisest,  and  most  faithful,  and 
worthiest  of  his  perilous  magistracy.  A  halo  rests 
upon  his  character,  and  we  find  no  longer  any  thing  to 
blame,  scarcely  any  thing  not  to  admire,  in  the  meas- 
ures and  counsels  of  his  gloriously  upright,  impartial, 
passionless,  undiscourageable  rule.  But  we  did  not 
always  see  him  in  that  figure.  When,  already  three 
full  years  of  his  time  were  gone  by,  many  of  us  were 
doubtful  whether  most  to  blame  or  to  praise,  and  many 
who  most  wanted  to  praise,  had  well  nigh  lost  their 
confidence  in  him,  and  even  retained  their  respect  with 
difficulty.  But  the  successes  he  deserved  began,  at  last, 
to  come,  and  the  merit  of  his  rule  to  appear.  We  only 
doubted  still  whether  wholly  to  approve  and  praise. 
A  certain  grotesqueness  and  over-simplicity,  in  spite  of 
all  our  favoring  judgments,  kept  off  still  the  just  impres- 
sion of  his  dignity,  and  suffered  us  to  only  half  believe. 
But  the  tragic  close  of  his  life  added  a  new  element,  and 


CHAP.  IV.  so    GREAT    A    POWER.  209 

brought  on  a  second  revision ;  setting  him  in  a  charac- 
ter only  the  more  sublime,  because  it  is  original  and 
quite  unmatched  in  history.  The  great  name  now  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  emerges  complete,  a  power  of  bless- 
ing on  mankind,  and  a  bond  of  homage  in  the  feeling 
of  his  country  forever. 

Shall  we  not  see,  in  this  humbler  and  yet  striking 
example,  how  it  is  that  moral  power,  even  the  moral 
power  of  Christ,  emerges  finally  and  is  crowned,  only 
when  the  necessary  point  of  revision  is  reached  ?  So  it 
is  that  Christ  begins  to  be  known  as  "the  wisdom  of 
God  and  the  power" — "  the  power  of  God  unto  salva- 
tion." This,  too,  is  what  an  apostle  means  when  he 
prays,  that  he  may  "know  him,  and  the  power  of 
his  resurrection."  It  is  not  the  omnipotent  power  that 
raised  him,  which  he  longs  to  know,  but  the  heart- 
power,  the  power  of  his  great  name  and  glory,  which 
began  to  be  discovered  and  conceived,  when  he  rose 
from  the  dead.  And  the  same  exactly  is  true  of  an- 
other famous  passage,  if  only  we  had  time  to  make  out 
the  interpretation,  where  he  says — "  And  declared  to  be 
the  Son  of  God  with  power,  according  to  the  Spirit  of 
holiness,  by  the  resurrection  from  the  dead." 

If  then  so  great  a  power  has  been  obtained  by  Christ, 
in  the  matter  of  his  life,  we  shall  expect,  of  course,  to 
see  it  in  effects  on  human  life  and  charac-  The  power  ig 
ter  that  correspond.  And  we  have  not  proved  by  its  ef- 
far  to  go  before  we  find  them.  A  few 
weeks  after,  when  the  disciples  are  waiting  to  be  en- 
dued with  power  from  on  high,  even  for  the  promised 
•  18* 


210  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

Spirit,  who  should  take  the  things  of  Christ  and  show 
them  unto  men,  convincing  thus  of  sin,  of  righteous- 
ness, and  a  judgment  to  come,  a  new  scene  is  suddenly 
opened  in  their  assembly,  by  the  arrival  of  the  promise ; 
whereupon  the  preaching  of  the  great,  hitherto  unknown, 
gospel  is  inaugurated  as  a  power  on  the  world.  The 
cloud  that  was  on  Peter's  mind  is  now  taken  away ;  his 
understanding  is  opened;  and  suddenly  grasping  the 
true  meaning  of  his  Master's  life  and  death,  as  a  gospel 
of  salvation  for  men,  he  begins  to  preach  it.  He  goes 
over  the  outline  of  his  Lord's  miracles  and  death,  turn- 
ing his  discourse  principally  on  the  matter  of  the  res- 
urrection, and  proclaiming  him  boldly,  as  the  ascended 
king  of  the  world.  "  Therefore  being  by  the  right  of 
God  exalted,  and  having  received  of  the  Father  the 
promise  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  he  hath  shed  forth  this 
which  ye  now  see  and  hear."  And  then  he  turns  di- 
rectly down  upon  the  consciences  of  the  assembly  all 
the  tremendous  guilt  of  their  crime  in  his  crucifixion. 
— "  Therefore,  let  all  the  house  of  Israel  know  assur- 
edly, that  God  hath  made  that  same  Jesus  whom  ye 
have  crucified  both  Lord  and  Christ." 

The  result  was  that  thousands  in  the  immense  assem- 
bly, overwhelmed  and  utterly  broken  down,  by  the  sense 
of  their  guilt,  turned  themselves,  by  faith,  as  the  apostles 
exhorted,  to  the  now  ascended  victim  of  their  malice, 
for  the  remission  of  their  sins.  And  how  mightily  are 
they  changed !  It  is  as  if  some  irruption  of  heaven's 
love  had  broken  into  them ;  as  it  verily  has,  in  the  per- 
son of  the  just  now  hated  and  murdered  Nazarene. 


CHAP.  IV.  SO    GREAT    A    POWER.  211 

They  appear  to  hardly  know,  as  yet,  what  has  befallen 
them.  They  are  so  happy  in  their  dear,  mysterious  fel- 
lowship, that  there  are  not  hours  enough  in  the  day 
and  the  night  for  their  enjoyment  of  it.  The  city  con- 
verts sell  their  goods  and  possessions  to  feed  the  pil- 
grims on  a  longer  stay,  and  they  go  on  breaking  bread, 
in  open  hospitality,  from  house  to  house,  eating  their 
meat  with  gladness,  and  praising  God  as  they  go. 

This  now  is  the  power;  first  a  convincing  power, 
next  a  power  of  love  begetting  love — how  great  a 
power  it  is  and  is  to  be,  we  may  perceive  in  these  its 
first  effects.  By  this  power  it  was  that  the  apostles  and 
first  Christians  gained  their  rapid  victories  over  the 
learning  and  philosophy,  and  finally  the  military  em- 
pire of  the  heathen  world.  They  went  every  where 
preaching  Christ  and  his  resurrection,  testified  every 
where  the  great  name  Jesus,  saying — "there  is  none 
other  name  under  heaven,  given  among  men,  whereby 
we  must  be  saved." 

And  this  name  is  a  greater  power  now  than  it  was 
then,  and  has  a  greater  hold  of  the  world.  It  pene- 
trates more  and  more  visibly  our  senti-  The  power  fo- 
ments, opinions,  laws,  sciences,  inven-  creases  stm- 
tions,  modes  of  commerce,  modes  of  society,  advancing, 
as  it  were,  by  the  slow  measured  step  of  centuries,  to 
a  complete  dominion  over  the  race.  So  the  power  is 
working  and  so  it  will  till  it  reigns.  Not  that  Christ 
grows  better,  but  that  he  is  more  and  more  competently 
apprehended,  as  he  becomes  more  widely  incarnated 
among  men,  and  obtains  a  fitter  representation  to 


212  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

thought,  in  the  thoughts,  and  works  of  his  people.  If 
in  some  particular  century  the  gospel  seems  to  suffer  a 
wave  of  retrocession,  it  is  only  gathering  power  for  an- 
other great  advance.  Bad  power  dies,  right  power 
never.  Prophecy,  or  no  prophecy,  such  a  Christ  of 
God  could  not  come  into  the  world,  without  a  certainty 
coming  in  his  train,  that  all  the  kingdoms  of  the 
world  shall  become  the  kingdoms  of  our  Lord  and  of 
his  Christ,  and  he  shall  reign  forever. 

_y          I  can  not  better  close  this  exposition,  than  by  citing  a 
single  passage  of  Scripture,  that  contains  and  sums  up 


Glorious  affirma-    all  we  have  been  trying  to  show,  in  the 
fcion  of  the  Power-   briefest  and  most  pregnant  testimony 
possible,  every  syllable  of  which  deserves  to  be  pro- 
foundly meditated  by  itself  —  "  Let  this  mind  be  in  you 
which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus;    who,  being  in  the 
form  of  God,  thought  it  not  robbery  to  be  equal  with 
'*'  God,  but  made  himself  of  no  reputation,  and  took  upon 
/•*  $**+*  him  the  form  of  a  servant,  and  was  made  in  the  likeness 
**<  j£+i-*f     of  men  ;  and,  being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  he  hum- 
bled himself,  and  became  obedient  unto  death,  even  the 
death  of  the  cross  ;  wherefore  God  also  hath  highly  exalted 

*  "I  M  Lfcj'tW 

him,  and  given  him  a  name  that  is  above  every  name  ; 

&£*  *y<  ^  "that  at  the  name  of  Jesus  every  knee  should  bow,  of 

fa  $•££*  things  in  heaven,  and  things  in  earth,  and  things  under 

f  felt.  *i*—  *^e  earth  5  an(^  "kQa*  every  tongue  should  confess  that 

Jesus  Christ  is  Lord,  to  the  glory  of  God  the  Father." 


The  historical  exposition  of  the  moral  power  of 
Christ,  or  of  the  process  by  which  it  is  obtained,  is  now 
';/- 


£ 


/4^  &r**&~++4-~    &+~*~*t*  sc+jr 

CHAP.  IV.  SO    GREAT    A    POWER.  213 

finished,  and  yet  certain  points  of  rational  consequence 
remain  to  be  suggested,  which  could  not  be  crowded 
into  the  body  of  it,  without  creating  an  j?o  dogmatic 
appearance  of  distraction.  The  view  of  statement  possible. 
Christ's  mission,  I  have  been  trying  to  establish,  ex- 
cludes the  possibility,  it  will  be  seen,  of  any  dogmatic 
formula,  in  which  it  may  be  adequately  stated.  It  is 
not  a  theorem,  or  form  of  thought,  but  a  process,  and 
the  process  includes  all  the  facts  of  a  life.  It  will  also  be 
seen  how  the  apostle  labors,  in  the  passage  just  cited, 
even  to  condense  an  outline  view  of  it  into  seven  full 
verses  of  his  epistle ;  in  which  also  it  is  made  suffi- 
ciently evident,  that  the  Scriptures  themselves  do  not 
know  how  to  make  up  any  formula  of  three  or  four 
lines,  that  will  adequately  express,  in  the  manner  of 
our  theologians,  the  import  of  Christ's  reconciling  work. 
That  work,  accurately  speaking,  consisted  in  exactly 
the  whole  life  of  Jesus ;  all  that  he  said  and  did,  and,  to 
human  impression,  was,  in  the  conditions  through 
which  he  passed.  No  such  life  was  ever  written  even 
of  a  man.  Not  even  the  gospels  themselves  are  any 
thing  more  than  brief  outline  records.  And  one  of  the 
writers  distinctly  intimates  the  impossibility  of  a  com- 
plete narrative,  because  it  would  make  the  record  too 
cumbersome  to  have  any  value — the  world  itself 
would  scarcely  contain  the  books.  How  then  can 
any  formula,  or  brief  summation  of  words,  be  imag- 
ined to  fitly  represent  the  meaning  of  the  life-work 
of  Christ,  when  that  meaning  is  exactly  the  power 
obtained  by  the  life,  and  can  be  represented  only 


214  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

by  the  facts,  of  which  it  is  the  character  and  expres- 
sion. 

Christ  I  just  said  is  not  a  form  of  thought.     He  is  no 
proposition.     He  is  given,  neither  by  nor  to,  logical    ' 

The  realit  of  definition.  He  is  no  quantitative  mat- 
Christ  is  what  he  ter,  like  a  credit  set  in  a  book,  or  a  pun- 
ishment graduated  by  satisfaction.  His 
reality  is  what  he  expresses,  under  laws  of  expression ; 
the  power,  the  great  name,  he  thus  obtains  under  forms 
of  human  conduct  that  make  their  address  to  reason, 
conviction,  feeling,  passion,  sympathy,  imagination, 
faith,  and  the  receptivities  generally  of  the  moral  na- 
ture. What  rational  person  ever  imagined  that  he 
could  state,  in  a  defined  formula,  the  import  of  any 
great  character;  Moses,  for  example,  Plato,  Scipio, 
Washington.  Hence  the  necessary  poverty,  and  almost 
mockery,  of  all  attempts  to  put  the  work  of  Christ  in 
formula,  or  to  dogmatize  it  in  a  proposition,  or  church 
article.  The  Iliad,  or  Paradise  Lost  could  as  well  be  for- 
mulized  in  that  manner  as  his  gospel.  We  can  give  the 
"Argument "  of  these,  in  so  many  headings  for  so  many 
books ;  but  the  epic  power  will  be  wholly  in  the  acts 
and  incidents  that  fill  the  books,  never  in  their  "Argu- 
ment." So  we  can  say  of  Christ's  work,  and  of  the 
sublime  art-mystery  of  his  incarnate  life,  what  is  not 
absurd,  what  may  even  be  of  use — we  do  so  when  we 
call  it  God's  method  of  obtaining  power  ovftr  follg™ 
character — still  it  must  be  left  us  to  feel,  that  just  noth- 
ing of  the  power,  that  is  of  the  whole  living  truth,  is  in 
the  account  we  have  given.  Nothing  we  can  say  of 


CHAP.  IV.  go    GREAT    A    POWER.  215 

the  power  will  appear  to  have  much  power  in  it ;  for 
nothing  raises  the  true  sense  of  that  power,  but  just 
what  he  did,  taken  just  as  he  did  it.  The  most 
that  can  be  hoped  is,  that,  by  what  of  dissertation 
we  may  indulge,  the  sense  of  his  work  and  the  facts 
by  which  his  power  is  obtained,  may  be  unlocked  more 
easily. 

In  this  manner,  four  points,  in  particular,  may  yet 
be  made,  in  regard  to  the  process  and  effect  of  his  life, 
that  will  render  the  power  of  it  still  more  intelligible, 
and  so  far  more  impressive. 

1.  That  the  kind  of  moral  power  obtained  by  Christ 
is  different  from  any  which  had  been  obtained  by  men, 
more  difficult,  deeper,  and  holier.  He  No  similar  power 
founds  no  school  of  philosophy,  heads  amons  mcn- 
no  revolution,  fights  no  great  battle,  achieves  no  title  to 
honor,  such  as  the  world's  great  men  have  achieved. 
Men  consciously  feel,  that  a  strong  power  is  somehow 
gathering  about  his  person,  but  will  only  know,  by  and 
by,  what  it  is.  It  is  the  power,  in  great  part,  of  sorrow, 
suffering,  sacrifice,  death,  a  paradox  of  ignominy  and 
grandeur  not  easily  solved.  Honor,  in  the  common 
sense  of  that  term,  can  make  nothing  of  it.  Fame  will 
not  lift  her  airy  trumpet,  to  publish  it,  and  would  only 
mock  it  if  she  did.  If  we  call  him  a  hero,  as  some  are 
trying  to  do,  then  all  other  heroes  appear  to  be  scarcely 
more  than  mock  heroes  in  the  comparison. 

There  is  no  wrong  or  impropriety  in  calling  Christ  a 
hero,  if  we  do  not  assume  that,  having  found  him  in  the 
the  class  of  heroes,  we  have  thus  accounted  for  his  won- 


216  HOW   HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

derful  eminence,  on  the  ground  of  his  mere  natural 
manhood.  I  believe  that  I  have  once  or  twice  spoken, 
casually,  of  the  heroic  element  in  his  life;  and  I 
in  what  sense  have  hesitated  much,  whether  I  should 
Christ  was  a  hero.  not  present  him  more  deliberately  in 
this  figure.  The  only  reason  why  I  should  not  is 
that,  regarding  him  as  the  manifestation,  or  demonstra- 
tion, of  God,  the  honor  I  should  claim  for  him  might 
only  seem  to  put  him  below  the  scale  of  divinity  and 
not  in  it.  And  yet,  in  as  far  as  he  ranges  in  the  scale, 
or  under  the  conditions,  of  humanity,  obtaining  a  name 
and  a  power  under  such  conditions,  it  is  even  a  glori- 
ously divine  token  for  him,  that  he  so  visibly,  remarka- 
bly, immeasurably,  transcends  all  known  examples  of 
heroism.  Besides  there  is  a  very  important  matter  to 
be  gained  by  such  a  conception  of  his  character.  We 
conceive  him  in  the  travail  of  his  suffering  life  and  sac- 
rifice, we  magnify  his  tenderness  and  patience  and  sub- 
mission to  the  cross,  we  call  him  the  Lamb  that  is  of- 
fered for  our  sin,  and  pressing  wholly  on  this  side  of 
passivity,  we  are  in  no  small  danger  of  enfeebling  the 
moral  power  he  is  obtaining  by  his  life.  Accordingly, 
to  right  the  conception  we  get  by  such  overdoing  of  his 
passive  and  submissive  virtue,  there  is  needed  also  some 
just  reference  to  the  energetic,  and  positive,  and  really 
grand  heroism  of  his  mission.  For  really  there  is  noth- 
ing, in  all  the  heroic  characters,  whether  of  history,  or 
fiction,  at  all  comparable  to  the  sublime  figure  he  main- 
tains, in  his  very  humble,  or,  as  we  might  even  say,  de- 
jected ministry. 


CHAP.  IV.  so    GREAT    A    POWER.  217 

He  plainly  does  not  think  himself  that  he  is  in  the 
passive  key,  even  when  he  suffers  most ;  but  he  calmly 
asserts  the  power  he  has  to  keep  his  life  unharmed  against 
all  enemies — "  No  man  taketh  it  from  me,  but  I  lay  it 
down  of  myself.  I  have  power  to  lay  it  down  and  I  have 
power  to  take  it  again."  Nothing  compels  him  to  die,  but 
the  grandly  heroic  motive  supplied  by  his  love  to  his 
enemies.  All  true  martyrs  we  conceive  to  be  God's  he- 
roes ;  but  what  martyr  ever  bore  witness  to  the  truth, 
whose  death  had  not  some  reference  to  the  original, 
transcendent  martyrdom  of  the  Son  of  God  ?  Heroes 
throw  their  life  upon  their  cause,  by  inspiration  from  it ; 
he  had  meat  and  drink  and  home  for  his  houseless 
body,  in  the  work  he  had  taken  upon  him,  and  know- 
ing that  he  must  die  for  his  cause,  he  could  say  "  how 
am  I  straitened  till  it  be  accomplished."  Heroes  are 
men  who  go  above  all  the  low  resentments ;  he  could 
even  pray  the  prayer  of  pity  and  apology  for  his  ene- 
mies, when  dying  under  their  hands.  Great  souls  are 
not  flurried  and  disconcerted  by  the  irruption  of  great 
dangers  ;  behold  the  solid  majesty  of  this  man's  silence, 
this  provincial  man,  this  country  mechanic,  when  so 
many  fierce  accusations,  by  so  many  fierce  conspirators 
in  high  life,  are  hurled  against  him.  Heroes  that  die, 
and  bear  themselves  nobly  in  the  terrible  hour  of  their 
conflict,  are  commonly  caught  without  much  warning, 
and  are  fortified  by  the  tremendous  excitement  of  the 
hour ;  Christ  was  facing  death  for  at  least  three  whole 
years,  and  waiting  for  his  time  to  come ;  yet  never  weak- 
ened, or  swerved,  by  the  doom  that  he  knew  to  be  on 

19 


218  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

him,  but  comforting  his  great  mind  constantly  in 
the  hope  that,  when  he  should  be  lifted  up,  he  would 
draw  all  men  to  him.  The  great  causes  of  heroes  are 
commonly  under  the  eye,  and  are  more  or  less  comput- 
able in  their  time  ;  but  Christ,  the  poor  rustic  of  Naza- 
reth, undertakes  a  cause  and  kingdom  that  comprehend 
the  world,  and  require  a  run  of  time  outreaching  all 
definite  computation,  and  shows  not  half  the  misgivings 
of  the  great  heroes  of  the  world,  who  expect  their  tri- 
umph and  perhaps  their  meed  of  fame,  within  a  few 
short  years..  There  was  never,  we  may  safely  say,  any 
such  instance  of  self-devotion  among  men,  never  so  lit- 
tle of  heat  or  excitement,  never  such  firmness  coupled 
with  such  tenderness  and  gentleness,  never  such  oblivion 
of  popularity,  never  such  incapacity  to  be  humbled  by 
ignominy.  So  that  if  we  speak  of  heroes,  we  are 
tempted  either  to  say  that  he  is  no  hero  at  all,  or  else 
the  only  hero.  And  here  it  is  that  the  moral  power  we 
have  seen  him  obtaining  culminates.  In  this  fact,  the 
almost  feminine  passivity  we  are  likely  to  figure 
as  the  total  account  of  his  character,  reveals  the 
mighty  underwork  and  robust  vigor  of  a  really  immor- 
tal confidence  and  tenacity.  The  moral  power  he 
obtains,  in  a  character  of  such  transcendent  heroism 
corresponds.  We  make  no  true  account  of  it,  till  we 
take  it  as  the  supernatural  flowering  on  earth,  of  a  glory 
that  he  had  before  the  world  was. 

The  example  most  nearly  correspondent,  among  men 
is  that  of  Socrates,  and  yet  the  superficial,  almost  flashy 
merit  of  his  power,  heroic  as  he  certainly  was,  is  about 


the  most  striking  result  of  a  just 

had  been  different  opinions  about  Socrates 

many  scholars  even  now  do  not  hes- 

Socratesthenear- 

itate  to  speak  lightly  of  his  coarse  man-  est  human  exam- 
ners,  and  the  general  lightness  and  ple* 
rudeness  of  his  character.  Be  the  truth  what  it  may, 
in  regard  to  these  matters,  there  was  certainly  a  remark- 
able dignity,  and  even  sublimity  in  his  death.  Ar- 
raigned and  sentenced  to  death  unjustly,  for  a  mere 
political  offense,  he  refused,  as  a  philosopher  and  good 
citizen,  to  save  his  life  by  an  escape  that  would  make 
him  a  violator  of  the  laws  of  his  country ;  and  the 
Athenian  people  had  been  sufficiently  exercised  in  po- 
litical matters  to  appreciate  the  merit  of  such  a  sacrifice. 
A  great  popular  reaction  immediately  followed,  that 
overwhelmed  his  accusers,  and  made  his  name,  forever 
after,  one  of  the  great  powers  of  the  world.  A  merely 
casual  reaction  followed  the  death  of  Christ,  in  the 
same  manner,  but  it  came  to  no  practical  issue,  just  be- 
cause the  sacrifice  he  made  of  his  life  was  too  deep  in 
its  heroic  meaning  to  be  practically  valued,  and  too 
profoundly  accusatory  to  awaken  sympathy.  He  died 
for  no  ends  of  patriotic  devotion,  or  even  of  moral  re- 
formation, as  regards  the  social  wrongs  and  destructive 
vices  of  the  world,  but  for_Jhe_^Me_M-5iBLJLtsfilf-  and 
the  recovery  jDf_s_Quls  to  God — just  that  kind  of  bene- 
faction which  only  a  very  few  of  mankind,  such  as 
Plato,  for  example,  and  like  meditative  teachers  here 
and  there,  had  once  thought  of  as  a  want,  or  could  even 
begin  to  conceive.  To  such  a  land  of  sacrifice  the 


220  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

world  itself  was  a  dead  receptivity,  and  it  was  to  be  the 
glory  of  his  power,  that  he  could  open  a  receptivity 
where  there  was  none ;  that  he  could  stir  the  conscious- 
ness of  lost  men  deeply  enough  to  make  the  state  of 
sin  a  dread  reality,  and  the  want  of  reconciliation  to  God 
the  prime  necessity  of  their  being.  And  just  here  lies 
the  wonder  of  his  power ;  that  he  opens  such  a  sense 
of  the  holy  and  of  men's  relations  to  a  holy  God,  as  to 
make  his  own  public,  where  there  was  none,  and  create 
the  very  homage  by  which  he  is  to  be  received ;  raising 
\flature  UP  to  ask  the  supernatural^  and  join  herself  to 
it,  in  a  faith  that  goes  above  all  of  this  world's  honors, 
homages,  and  applauses. 

2.  It  is  a  very  great  point,  as  regards  the  kind  of 
power,  Christ  is  obtaining,  that  he  humanizes  God  to 
God  humanized  men.  I  have  already  spoken  of  the  nec- 
tous.  essary  distance  and  coldness  of  a  mere 
attribute  power,  such  as  we  ourselves  generate,  when 
trying  to  think  God  as  the  Absolute  Being.  The  in- 
carnate life  and  history  of  Jesus  meet  us  here,  at  the 
point  of  our  weakness.  God  is  in  Christ,  consenting  to 
obtain  the  power,  by  which  he  will  regain  us  to  him- 
self, under  our  own  human  conditions.  He  is  in  our 
plane,  acting  with  us  and  for  us,  interpreted  to  our 
sympathies  by  what  he  does  and  is,  in  social  relation- 
ship with  us.  His  perfections  meet  us  in  our  own  meas- 
ures, not  in  the  impossible  measures  of  infinity  ;  and  so 
he  becomes  a  world-king  in  the  world,  and  not  above 
it  and  far  away  from  it.  We  know  him,  in  just  the 
same  way  as  we  know  one  another.  He  becomes  the 


CHAP.  IY.  SO    GREAT    A    POWER.  221 

great  Head  Character  in  human  history,  by  living  in  it 
Himself — such  a  kind  of  power,  as  being  once  in  it,  can 
never  be  gotten  out  of  it,  any  more  than  if  it  were  a 
new  diffusive  element  in  the  world's  atmosphere.  God 
is  no  more  a  theosophy,  or  mere  phosphorescence  of  our 
human  intelligence;  no  more  a  theophany,  like  those 
casual  appearances  of  the  Jehovah  Angel  in  the  old 
dispensation — all  which  left  him  a  God  more  separate, 
in  a  sense,  than  before,  as  any  such  unveiling  by  mere 
phantasm  must — but  a  God-human  or  God-man,  born 
into  our  race  itself,  and  even  into  a  place  in  our  human 
tables  of  genealogy.  And  since  we  are  so  deep  in  the 
senses,  he  contrives  to  meet  us  there,  that  we  may  hear, 
see  with  our  eyes,  look  upon,  handle  him  with  our 
hands.  Nay,  he  comes  directly  into  our  bodies  them- 
selves, by  the  healing  of  his  inward  touch,  and  occupies 
a  great  part  of  his  ministry  in  works  that  take  hold  of 
our  sympathy,  by  means  of  our  diseases.  No  greater 
advance  on  human  sensibility,  we  may  fairly  say,  could 
possibly  be  made,  than  is  in  fact  made,  in  this  wonder- 
ful chapter  of  humanization,  that  contains  the  teachings, 
healings,  tender  condescensions,  and  sufferings,  of  the 
divine  man  Jesus.  He  builds  up  anew,  so  to  speak, 
and  before  our  eyes,  in  the  open  facts  of  his  ministry, 
the  divine  perfections  themselves,  and  the  moral  power 
he  obtains  in  doing  it  is  just  what  it  must  be ;  a  name 
that  is  above  every  name. 

3.  It  is  another  great  article  of  his  power,  that  he  is 
able  to  raise,  at  once,  the  sense  of  guilt  and  attract  the 
confidence  of  the  guilty.  By  his  purity  of  life,  by  the 

19* 


222  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

Bublirae  reach  of  his  very  simple  doctrine,  by  his  terri- 
ble warnings  and  reproofs,  by  his  persistent  coupling  of 

it  both  wake™   disease>  in  a11  his  Dealings,  with  sin,  by 
guilt  and    draws  the  sorrows  and  the  suffering  patience 

confidence.  Qf  hig   ^  ^  ^   ^^   ignominy    of 

his  death,  followed  by  the  Spirit  coming  after  his  resur- 
rection, to  show  the  things  of  his  life  to  men  in  their 
true  light  of  meaning — by  all  these  piercing  demonstra- 
tions he  stirs  the  conviction  of  guilt,  as  never  it  was 
stirred  before,  and  yet  with  no  such  consequences  of 
revulsion  from  God,  as  belongs  to  the  natural  action  of 
guilt.  The  feeling  of  guilt,  under  mere  natural  convic- 
tion, is  a  feeling  of  recoil.  The  instinctive  language 
of  it  is — "  I  was  afraid  and  hid  myself."  It  shoves  the 
soul  off  from  God  and  then  it  pictures  God  as  being 
withdrawn  from  it.  A  certain  chill  is  felt  when  he  is 
thought  of,  and  the  soul  shivers  in  cold  dread  of  his 
purity.  But  the  incarnate  Saviour,  taking  his  place 
with  us  in  our  bad  level,  after  the  manner  just  de- 
scribed, stops  the  natural  recoil  of  our  guilt,  and  mar- 
ries even  our  self-condemnation  to  confidence.  Great 
as  our  guilt  is,  Christ,  we  see,  can  be  our  sponsor  for  all 
the  wrong  and  damage  of  it.  As  the  guilt  kept  him 
not  away  from  us,  so  it  shall  not  keep  us  away  from  him. 
Nay  as  it  even  drew  him  after  us,  shall  it  not  also  draw 
us  after  him  ?  True  we  have  sinned,  our  sin  is  upon 
us,  and  not  even  his  forgiveness  can  ever  annihilate  the 
fact  of  our  sin ;  but  if  he  has  come  over  it  all  to  be  the 
righteousness  of  God  upon  us,  may  we  not  come 
away  from  it,  and  be  the  righteousness  of  God  in 


CHAP.  IV.  so    GREAT    A    POWER.  223 

him?  And  so  when  the  tough  and  sturdy  fact  of 
our  guilt  would  thrust  us  quite  away  from  God,  Christ 
so  far  reverses  every  thing  with  us  by  the  wonderful 
power  of  his  ministry,  that  our  guilt  is  even  made  to  be 
the  argument  that  draws  us,  and,  as  it  were,  fastens  our 
confidence.  It  would  almost  seem  to  be  a  miracle,  and 
yet  the  result  is  only  a  simple  incident  of  that  great 
moral  power,  by  which  he  is  able  to  reverse  every 
thing  in  the  fallen  condition  of  our  sin.  We  come 
now — 

4.  To  another  and  last  point,  where  the  moral  power 
obtained  by  Christ  gets  even  its  principal  weight  of 
impression;  viz.,  to  the  fact  made  evi-  Tho  culminating 
dent,  by  his  vicarious  sacrifice,  that  God  fact  is  God's  afflic- 
suffers  on  account  of  evil,  or  with  and  tionforsin- 
for  created  beings  under  evil — a  fact  very  commonly 
disallowed  and  rejected,  I  am  sorry  to  add,  even  by 
Christian  theology  itself,  as  being  rationally  irreconcila- 
ble with  God's  greatness  and  sufficiency. 

It  was  very  natural  that  the  coarse,  crude  mind  of 
the  world,  blunted  to  greater  coarseness  and  crudity  by 
the  chill  of  guilt  in  its  feeling,  should  be  overmuch  oc- 
cupied in  conceiving  God's  infinity  and  the  merely 
dynamic  energies  and  magnitudes  of  his  nature;  the 
sovereignty  of  his  will,  his  omnipotent  force,  his  neces- 
sary impassibility  to  force  external  to  himself,  his  essen- 
tial beatitude  as  excluding  all  inflictions  of  pain  or  loss. 
Hence  it  has  been  very  generally  held,  even  to  this  day, 
as  a  matter  of  necessary  inference,  that  God  is  superior, 
in  every  sense,  to  suffering.  Our  theologians  are  com- 


224  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

monly  shocked,  as  by  some  frightful  word  of  deroga- 
tion, when  the  contrary  is  affirmed,  and  when  they  come 
to  the  matter  of  Christ's  suffering,  they  are  careful  to 
show,  regarding  it  as  a  necessary  point  of  reverence, 
that  it  was  only  the  human  nature  that  suffered,  not  the 
divine,  suffering  by  itself.  Besides,  it  will  even  be  ad- 
mitted, perhaps  unwittingly,  by  those  who  dare  to 
obtrude  in  this  manner  upon  the  interior  mystery  of 
Christ's  person,  where  all  reasonings  about  the  physical 
suffering  must  be  at  fault,  that  even  God  himself,  as  well 
out  of  Christ  as  in  the  incarnate  person  of  Christ,  does 
incur  a  profoundly  real  suffering — not  physical  suffer- 
ing, as  I  now  speak,  yet  a  suffering  more  deep  than  any 
physical  suffering  can  be. 

The  principal  suffering  of  any  really  great  being  and 
especially  of  God  is  because  of  his  moral  sensibility, 
God'sperfections  na^  Because  of  his  moral  perfection, 
even  require  him  to  He  would  not  be  perfect,  if  he  did  not 
feel  appropriately  to  what  is  bad,  base, 
wrong,  destructive,  cruel,  and  to  every  thing  opposite 
to  perfection.  If  the  sight  of  wrong  were  to  meet  the 
discovery  of  God,  only  as  a  disgusting  spectacle  meets  a 
glass  eye,  his  perfection  would  be  the  perfection  of  a 
glass  eye  and  nothing  more.  None  of  us  conceive  Him 
in  this  manner,  but  we  conceive  him  as  having  a  right 
sensibility  to  every  thing.  "We  say  that  he  is  dis- 
pleased, and  what  is  displeasure  but  an  experience  op- 
posite to  pleasure  ?  so  far  a  kind  of  suffering.  We  say 
that  he  "  loathes  "  all  baseness  and  impurity,  and  what  is 
closer  to  a  pain  than  loathing  ?  "We  say  that  he  "  hates  " 


CHAP.  IV.  so    GREAT    A    POWER.  225 

all  unrighteousness,  and  what  is  hatred  but  a  fire  of 
suffering?  Is  he  not  a  "long  suffering"  God,  and 
is  there  no  suffering  in  long  suffering  ?  Is  he  not  a  pa- 
tient God,  and  what  is  patience  but  a  regulated  suffer- 
ing ?  So  of  compassion,  pity,  sympathy,  indignations 
suppressed,  wounds  of  ingratitude,  bonds  of  faith  vio- 
lated by  treachery.  So  far  we  all  admit  the  fact  of 
divine  suffering,  no  matter  how  sturdily  we  deny  it  in 
theory.  The  suffering  is  moral  suffering  it  is  true,  but 
it  is  the  greatest  and  most  real  suffering  in  the  world — 
so  great  that  a  perfect  being  would  be  likely,  under  it, 
to  quite  forget  physical  suffering,  even  if  it  were  upon 
him.  Making  then  so  vast  an  admission,  what  does  it 
signify,  afterward,  to  turn  ourselves  round,  in  what  we 
conceive  to  be  our  logical  sagacity,  and  raise  the  petty 
inference  that  God,  being  infinite,  must  be  impassible! 

But  we  must  not  omit,  in  this  connection,  to  notice  a 
fact,  as  regards  the  moral  suffering  of  God,  that  is  not 
commonly  admitted,  or  even  observed, 

God's   beatitude 

like  the  others  just  referred  to.  Thus  not  diminished  by 
we  conceive,  that  God  is  a  being  whose  the  suffering  of  his 
moral  nature  is  pervaded  and  charac- 
tered, all  through,  by  love.  Some  teachers  even  go  so 
far  as  to  insist  that  the  Scripture  declaration — uGod 
is  love" — is  no  rhetorical  figure,  but  a  logical  and 
literal  teaching;  that  God's  very  substance,  or  es- 
sence, is  love.  And  yet  love  is  an  element,  or  prin- 
ciple, whether  substance  or  not,  so  essentially  vica- 
rious, that  it  even  mortgages  the  subject  to  suffering, 
in  all  cases  where  there  is  no  ground  of  complacency. 


226  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

As  certainly  as  God  is  love,  the  burdens  of  love  must 
be  upon  him.  He  must  bear  the  lot  of  his  enemies, 
and  even  the  wrongs  of  his  enemies.  In  pity,  in  pa- 
tience, in  sacrifice,  in  all  kinds  of  holy  concern,  he  must 
take  them  on  his  heart,  and  be  afflicted  for  them  as  well 
as  by  them.  In  his  greatness  there  is  no  bar  to  this 
kind  of  suffering ;  He  will  suffer  because  he  is  great, 
and  be  great  because  he  suffers.  Neither  is  his  ever- 
lasting beatitude  any  bar  to  his  suffering ;  for  there  is 
nothing  so  essentially  blessed  as  to  suffer  well.  Moral 
greatness  culminates  in  great  and  good  suffering ;  cul- 
minates also  in  blessedness,  for  there  is  a  law  of  com- 
pensation in  all  moral  natures,  human  as  well  as  divine, 
divine  as  well  as  human,  by  which  their  suffering  for 
love's  sake  becomes  always  a  transcendent  and  more 
consciously  sovereign  joy.  There  ought  to  be  no  incredi- 
ble paradox  in  this ;  for  it  is  a  fact  every  day  proved— 
always  to  be  known  by  mortal  experience. 

Now  it  is  this  moral  suffering  of  God,  the  very  fact 

which  our  human  thinking  is  so  slow  to  receive,  that 

Christ  unfolds  and  works  into  a  charac- 

Ciirist's    moral  . 

power  oonsumma-  ter  and  a  power,  in  his  human  life, 
ted  in  the  agony  gig  compassions  burdened  for  guilty 

and  the  cross.  .  ...  . 

men,  his  patient  sensibilities,  sorrows, 
sacrifices,  the  intense  fellow-feeling  of  his  ministry,  his 
rejected  sympathies,  wrongs,  ignominies — under  and  by 
all  these  it  is  that  he  verifies,  and  builds  into  a  charac- 
ter, the  moral  suffering  of  the  divine  love. 

Hence  what  is  called  the  agony,  which  gives,  in  a 
sense,  the  key-note  of  his  ministry ;  because  it  is  pure 


CHAP.  IV.  SO    GREAT    A    POWER.  227 

moral  suffering;  the  suffering,  that  is,  of  a  burdened 
love  and  of  a  holy  and  pure  sensibility,  on  which  the 
hell  of  the  world's  curse  and  retributive  madness  is 
just  about  to  burst.  There  is  here  no  physical  suffer- 
ing, save  what  results  from  his  moral  and  mental  suffer- 
ing. There  is  no  fear ;  for,  to  human  appearance,  there 
is  nothing  as  yet  to  fear ;  and,  besides,  the  pathology 
of  the  suffering  is  exactly  opposite  to  that  of  fear ;  in 
which  the  blood  flies  the  skin,  retreating  on  the  heart, 
instead  of  being  forced  outward  and  exuding  from  it. 
There  is,  too,  no  appearance  of  panic  in  the  sufferer's 
action,  and  he  expresses,  no  doubt  truly,  what  he  feels 
when  he  says,  that  his  "  soul  is  exceeding  sorrowful." 
We  discover,  also,  at  several  distinct  points  in  his  min- 
istry before,  that  he  is  under  a  tendency  to  just  this 
kind  of  agony ;  as  when  he  groans  in  Spirit,  declares 
that  his  soul  is  troubled,  spends  whole  nights  in  prayer. 
It  is  as  if  there  were  a  load  upon  his  sensibility  which 
his  mere  human  organization  could  with  difficulty  sup- 
port. And  accordingly,  now  that  his  active  labors  are 
ended,  and  his  feeling  is  no  longer  diverted  and  drawn 
off  by  occupation,  now  that  he  has  made  his  farewell 
discourse,  offered  his  parting  prayer,  instituted  his  sup- 
per of  communion,  the  surge  of  burdened  sensibility 
rolls  in  upon  him  all  too  heavily  to  be  sustained.  And 
this  is  the  agony.  It  is  just  what  such  a  nature,  made 
the  vehicle  of  such  feeling,  facing  such  a  juncture, 
ought  to  suffer  and  could  not,  humanly  speaking,  avoid. 
It  is  the  moral  pain  of  his  love,  sharpened  by  the  crisis 
of  his  love;  and,  and  a  bloody  sweat  is  wrung  from  his 


228  HOW    HE    BECOMES  PART  II. 

too  frail  body,  by  the  overload  of  divine  feeling  strug- 
gling under  it. 

In  his  cross  there  is  also  a  physical  suffering,  of 
which  something  is  made  by  the  Scriptures,  and  a  great 
deal  more  by  theology ;  for  multitudes  conceive  that  this 
physical  suffering  is  the  pain  God  takes  for  satisfaction, 
when  he  releases  the  pains  that  are  due  under  the  just 
liabilities  of  sin.  I  will  not  undertake  to  solve  the 
mystery  of  these  physical  pains;  for  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  God  is  a  being  physically  impassible.  But 
it  is  something  to  observe  that  there  is  nothing  peculiar 
in  them,  as  distinct  from  the  mystery  of  the  incarna- 
tion. God  is  not  finite,  or  subject,  any  more  than  he  is 
impassible,  and  yet  he  is,  in  some  sense,  uninvestigable 
by  us,  both  finite  and  subject.  Enough  for  us,  as  re- 
gards the  subject  state  of  Christ,  that  he  is  able  to  ex- 
press so  much  of  the  glory  of  the  Father.  So  of  the 
pains  or  physical  sufferings.  Their  importance  to  us 
lies  probably,  not  in  what  they  are,  but  in  what  they 
express,  or  morally  signify.  They  are  the  symbol  of 
God's  moral  suffering.  The  moral  tragedy  of  the  gar- 
den is  supplemented  by  the  physical  tragedy  of  the 
cross ;  where  Jesus,  by  not  shrinking  from  so  great 
bodily  pains,  which  the  coarse  and  sensuous  mind  of 
the  world  will  more  easily  appreciate,  shows  the  moral 
suffering  of  God  for  sinners  more  affectingly,  because 
he  does  it  in  the  lower  plane  of  natural  sensibility. 
And  yet  even  the  suffering  of  the  cross  appears  to  be 
principally  moral  suffering ;  for  the  struggle  and  tension 
of  his  feeling  is  so  great  that  he  dies,  it  is  discovered,- 


CHAP.  IT.  so    GREAT   A    POWER.  229 

long  before  the  two  others  crucified  with  him,  and 
sooner  than,  by  mere  natural  torment,  was  to  be  expected. 
But  there  is  a  much  harsher  and  sharper  meaning 
frequently  given  to  the  agony  and  the  cross,  as  if  Jesus 
were  in  the  lot  of  sin  a  great  deal  more  Nothing  penal  in 
literally  than  I  have  conceived  him  to  the  agony  and  the 
be,  and  God  were  giving  him  a  cup  of 
judicial  anger  to  drink,  from  which  his  soul  recoils. 
This  conception  is  supposed  to  be  specially  justified  by 
his  exclamation  from  the  cross — "  My  God,  my  God, 
why  hast  thou  forsaken  me ;"  where  it  is  imagined  that 
God  is  dealing  with  him  in  severity,  hiding  his  face  be- 
hind a  cloud  of  ire,  and  leaving  him  to  bear  the  penal 
woe  of  transgression ;  or,  if  not  this,  so  far  withdraw- 
ing from  him  as  to  drape  the  scene  of  his  death  in  a 
felt  darkness  of  soul,  that  shall  somehow  express  the 
divine  abhorrence  to  sin.  The  assumption,  whether 
in  one  form  or  the  other,  appears  to  be  gratuitous. 
That  the  soul  of  Jesus,  just  reeling  into  death,  should 
utter  such  a  cry  was  most  natural,  and  it  should  be 
printed  with  a  point  of  exclamation,  as  being  a  cry  of 
distress,  not  with  a  point  of  interrogation,  as  if  he  were 
raising  a  question  of  remonstrance  about  a  matter  of 
fact.  When  will  theologic  dogmatism  understand  the 
language  of  passion  ?  Besides  an  angel  is  sent  to  him 
in  his  agony  to  strengthen  him — an  angel  sent  to  sup- 
port him  in  the  desertion  of  God  ?  Does  he  not  also 
protest  that  he  can  have  twelve  legions  of  angels  to 
help  him,  by  simply  asking  for  them  ?  And  in  what 
does  he  close  the  scene  of  his  suffering,  just  after  his 

20 


230  HOW    HE    BECOMES,    ETC.  PART  II. 

bitter  cry  on  the  cross,  but  these  most  open,  trustful 
words  of  confidence — "  Father  into  thy  hands  I  com- 
mend my  spirit."  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that 
this  hard  and  revolting  conception  of  the  agony  and 
the  cross  has  a  purely  theologic  origin.  At  no  other 
two  points,  in  the  ministry  of  Jesus,  would  the  eternal 
Father  have  testified  with  a  warmer  approbation  or  a 
sympathy  more  close — "This  is  my  beloved  Son  in 
whom  I  am  well  pleased."  Nay,  the  Father  did,  in 
fact,  give  just  this  testimony  for  him  beforehand,  in 
this  article  of  his  suffering ;  for  when  he  was  speaking 
of  his  death  now  at  hand,  and  his  soul  was  troubled, 
falling  into  a  kind  of  incipient  agony,  how  does  he 
quell  his  feeling  but  in  the  petition,  "  Father,  glorify 
thy  name;"  whereupon  there  comes  a  voice  from 
heaven,  saying,  "  I  have  both  glorified  it  and  will  glo- 
rify it  again."  Comforted  by  such  a  testimony,  and 
daring,  in  his  last  prayer,  to  say — "  I  have  glorified 
thee  on  the  earth,"  will  it  be  imagined  that  God,  be- 
holding such  an  accession  of  glory  in  his  death,  is  even 
hiding  from  him  still,  when  the  last  hour  comes,  in  grim 
displeasure  ? 

Here  then  it  is,  in  the  revelation  of  a  suffering  God, 
that  the  great  name  of  Jesus  becomes  the  embodied 
gloiy  and  the  Great  Moral  Power  of  God.  In  it,  as  in 
a  sun,  the  divine  feeling  henceforth  shines;  so  that 
whoever  believes  in  his  name  takes  the  power  of  it, 
and  is  transformed  radically,  even  at  the  deepest  center 
of  life,  by  it— born  of  God. 


PART    III. 

THE    RELATIONS    OF    GOD'S    LAW    AND 

JUSTICE    TO    HIS    SAVING    WORK 

IN    CHRIST. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE   LAW  BEFORE  GOVERNMENT. 

THUS  far  we  have  been  ranging  in  a  field,  we  may 
almost  say,  unobstructed  by  matters  of  difficulty  and 
debate;  we  have  reached,  in  fact,  the  middle  of  our 
journey,  and  have  encountered  none  of  the  great  battle 
points  of  the  champions,  but  have  only  seen  the  smoke 
from  afar.  We  seem,  indeed,  to  have  been  occupied 
only  in  such  kind  of  exploration,  as  could  well  be 
made  for  the  benefit  of  it,  and  to  simply  bathe  our  feel- 
ing in  that  love  which  God  has  revealed  in  his  Son. 
But  we  are  now,  at  last,  come  to  the  borders  of  the 
Amalekites,  where  there  is  no  way  to  get  a  passage,  but 
to  make  one.  All  the  questions  that  have  troubled 
others  are  in  our  path  also,  from  this  point  onward — 
questions  of  law,  penalty,  justice,  righteousness,  and 
their  connections  with  mercy,  forgiveness,  and  the  justi- 
fication of  life. 

A  suspicion  is  often  suggested,  by  those  who  are 
looking  after  the  truth  among  these  difficulties,  that 
there  must  be  some  hidden  ambiguity,  The  poiiticai  anai_ 
or  confusion  of  meaning,  in  the  words  osies  suspected. 
here  employed.  What  is  said  of  law  and  justice,  under 
the  analogies  of  human  government  does  not  appear  to 

20* 


234  THE    LAW  PART  III. 

hold,  without  qualifications  not  given.  It  can  not  be 
that  such  analogies  of  law,  and  justice,  and  penalty, 
and  pardon,  prepared  in  the  civil  state,  are  not  to  be 
used  in  religion.  Like  all  other  analogies  of  the  out- 
ward life,  they  were  designed  to  be.  And  yet  there 
are  few  close  observers,  I  suspect,  who  have  not  some- 
times been  so  far  impressed,  by  the  fatalities  discovered 
in  attempts  to  resolve  Christ's  work  under  this  kind  of 
analogy,  as  to  seriously  doubt  whether  any  thing  reliable 
can  be  thus  accomplished.  There  certainly  can  not  be, 
unless  the  analogy  is  carefully  qualified  by  others,  such 
for  example  as  those  of  the  family,  the  field,  the  shop,  the 
market.  There  is  also  another  kind  of  qualifier,  that 
is  obtained  by  getting  a  partially  distinct  footing  for  the 
subject,  in  a  province  of  thought  which  is  not  under 
such  analogies. 

And  it  is  in  this  view  that  I  now  propose  a  distinc- 
tion, which,  as  far  as  it  goes,  takes  the  subject  quite 
away  from  all  the  governmental  figures,  allowing  us  to 
speak,  or  to  reason  of  law  and  justification,  without 
being  dominated  by  such  figures — the  distinction,  I 
mean,  between  law  before  government,  and  law  by  gov- 
ernment ;  uninstituted,  necessary  law,  and  law  enacted 
and  supported  by  instituted  government.  If  I  am  suc- 
cessful in  the  statement  and  development  of  this  dis- 
tinction, a  considerable  part  of  the  confusion  which  has 
been  felt,  in  these  much  debated  matters  of  atonement, 
will,  I  think,  disappear. 

It  is  very  obvious  to  any  thoughtful  person,  that,  in 
order  of  reason,  whatever  may  be  true  as  respects  order 


CHAP.  I.  BEFOKE    GOVERNMENT.  235 

in  time,  there  was  law  before  God's  will,  and  before  his 
instituting  act ;  viz.,  that  necessary,  everlasting,  ideal, 
law  of  RIGHT,  which,  simply  to  think,  is  The  law  before 
to  be  forever  obliged  by  it.  The  perfec-  God'8  wil1- 
tions  of  God,  being  self-existent  and  eternal,  were  eter- 
nally squared  by  this  self-existent  law ;  for,  if  they  had 
any  moral  quality,  it  lay  in  their  conformity  to  some 
moral  law,  apart  from  which  no  such  perfection  is  con- 
ceivable. Otherwise,  if  God's  perfections  came  forth 
only  after  and  out  of  his  will,  and  after  the  institution 
of  his  government,  then  he  began  to  will  and  to  institute 
government,  without  any  perfections,  and  even  without 
any  moral  standard — becoming  all  righteousness,  and 
commanding  all  right,  before  even  the  ideal  law  of 
right  had  arrived. 

The  grand,  primal  fact  then  is,  that  God's  own  nature 
was  in  law,  or  crystallizing  irf  eternal  obligation,  before 
he  became  a  lawgiver,  and  that  he  became  a  lawgiver 
only  because  he  was  already  in  the  power  of  law.  Not 
that  he  was  in  obligation  to  any  governing  force 
above  him,  or  back  of  him ;  for  he  was  himself  the 
only  being,  and  the  container  of  all  forces  to  be.  The 
law  was  ideal,  and  not  governmental,  a  simple  thought, 
which  to  think  was  to  be  in  everlasting,  necessary,  ob- 
ligation to  it.  There  was  no  command  upon  God,  no 
penalty  hovered  by  to  threaten ;  but,  thinking  right, 
His  whole  nature  answered  in  sublime,  self-prompted, 
allegiance.  And  this  allegiance  to  an  idea,  viz.,  right, 
was  his  righteousness — the  sum  of  all  his  perfections, 
and  the  root  and  spring,  in  that  manner,  of  all  he  gov- 
*or,  or  by  instituted  government  maintains. 


236  THE    LAW  PARTlII. 

How  it  is  with  him,  in  this  law  before  government, 
we  shall  find  by  a  simple  reference  to  ourselves,  and 

Conception  of  ^e  methods  of  our  own  moral  nature ; 
the  law  absolute,  for  we  exist  in  His  image.  I  think 
of  space,  for  example,  and  this  eternal,  necessary 
idea  of  space  goes  with  me,  compelling  me  to  see 
all  outward  extensions,  or  distances  in  it.  I  think 
of  cause,  and  this  necessary  idea  compels  me,  or  quali- 
fies me,  to  see  all  goings  on  of  change,  under  terms  of 
causation.  These  ideas  are,  in  fact,  forms  of  the  mind ; 
forms  to  which  it  adverts  in  all  thinking,  and  without 
which  it  could  not  think  at  all.  The  same  is  true  of 
the  ideas  of  time,  and  number,  and  quantity.  Being  in 
the  form  of  time,  I  am  put  on  thinking  when ;  of  number, 
on  thinking  how  many ;  of  quantity  on  thinking  how 
much.  So  I  think  of  truth,  in  general  idea,  and  hav- 
ing that  form  of  thought  -developed,  I  begin  to  think 
what  particular  things  are  true.  In  the  same  way  is 
developed  the  grand,  all-regulative,  Moral  Idea  of 
Eight ;  which  to  simply  think,  is  to  be  put  in  everlast- 
ing obligation.  For  it  is  the  distinction  of  this  idea, 
that  it  is  the  Monarch  Principle  of  the  soul.  It  puts 
all  moral  natures  under  an  immediate,  indefeasible  bond 
of  sovereignty.  They  become  moral  natures  because 
they  are  set  before  this  idea  of  right.  Animals  think 
no  such  thought,  and  are  never  set  before  this  idea. 
They  probably  have  the.  ideas  of  space,  and  cause,  and 
number,  but  right  is  of  a  higher  range ;  else  if  they  could 
think  it,  they  would  be  moral  natures  in  common  with  us. 

Here  then,  as  being  simply  existent  with  a  moral  na- 


CHAP.  I.  BEFORE    GOVERNMENT.  237 

ture,  and  without  being  commanded,  or  before,  we  are 
put  in  a  state  of  fixed  obligation.  It  matters  not 
whether  we  know  of  a  God ;  for,  if  we  do,  we  are  none 
the  more  truly  under  law  after  his  commandment 
comes  than  before — though  we  may  be  more  effectively 
under  it.  The  simple  idea  of  right,  if  we  accept  the 
authority  of  it,  and  set  ourselves  to  it  for  a  total  homage 
and  conformity,  will  be  a  complete  regulation  for  the 
life — for  every  thought,  and  act,  and  disposition — and 
will  fashion  us  in  a  completely  harmonic  character  and 
state  of  righteousness.  It  only  can  not  do  this  after  we 
have  fallen  away  from  it,  and  been  thrown  out  of 
spiritual  order,  by  the  shock  of  our  disobedience.  Then 
it  will  even  require  a  salvation  to  restore  us. 

Let  us  not  forget,  or  overlook,  at  this  point,  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  eternal,  one  idea  which  contains 
all  law,  as  regards  the  principle— being  Applications 
a  simple,  universal,  always  present,  never  doubtful,  the 
doubtful  idea — and  those  questions  of  aw' n< 
right  or  wrong,  so  called,  which  relate  to  particular 
actions.  Here  we  have  abundance  of  doubt,  and 
debate,  and  perplexed  casuistry,  bringing  us  here  to 
one  conclusion,  here  to  another,  and  sometimes  to 
none  at  all.  To  settle  these  questions  we  make  appeal 
to  custom,  to  Scripture  usage  and  precept,  to  what  is 
useful,  to  what  is  beautiful,  setting  our  critical  judg- 
ments at  work,  and  our  memory,  and  our  tastes,  and 
mental  associations.  But  these  subordinate  and  partic- 
ular questions  of  duty  are  only  executory,  it  will  be 
observed,  as  regards  the  general  principle,  and  it  mat- 


238  THE    LAW  PART  III. 

ters  little  if  we  mistake,  or  differ  in  these,  doing  it  hon- 
estly, provided  only  we  are  trying  to  enthrone  the 
Monarch  Principle  and  put  every  thing  in  allegiance 
under  it.  Meantime,  in  this  law  of  laws,  we  all  agree 
without  a  shade  of  difference.  It  is  the  same  to  one 
human  creature,  in  one  part  of  the  world,  as  to  any  and 
every  other,  in  parts  most  remote;  the  same  to  the 
Gentile  as  to  the  Jew,  to  the  heathen  as  to  the  Christian. 
Nay,  it  is  the  same  to  created  souls  in  all  orders,  as  to 
God  uncreated,  and  the  same  to  God  as  to  them. 

There  is  then  a  law  before  government,  which  is 
common  to  all  moral  natures,  and  in  which  all  moral 
distinctions  have  their  root.  Pt  is,  in  fact,  the  law  of 
the  conscience ;  for  though  it  is  common  to  speak  of 
the  conscience  as  a  throne  of  government  inserted,  by 
the  creative  and  constructive  purpose  of  God,  it  does 
not  appear  to  be  true  that  God  ever  contrived  a  con- 
science, in  any  other  sense  than  that  he  has  appointed  a 
moral  nature  for  us,  in  distinction  from  one  that  is 
not.  The  conscience  of  God  is  only  the  fact  itself  of 
his  moral  nature,  and  our  conscience  is  but  the  fact  of 
our  kinship  with  him,  in  the  central  idea  that  contains 
the  mold  and  law  of  his  perfections.  If  we  use  the 
term  conscience  to  cover  the  ground,  not  merely  of  that 
central  idea,  but  of  all  particular  actions  under  it,  the 
conscience  would,  in  that  case,  be  a  really  infallible 
oracle  for  infinite  questions  in  us,  apart  from  all  helps 
of  judgment  and  discriminations  of  reason;  only  it  is 
plain  as  need  be,  and  can  not  well  escape  our  discovery, 
that  we  certainly  have  no  such  oracle  in  us ;  for  if  we 


CHAP.  I.  BEFORE    GOVERNMENT.  239 

have  it,  whence  come  so  many  unsolved  questions  and 
debates  of  duty  ? 

On  this  point  of  a  law  before  government,  and  a  con- 
science that  enthrones  it,  we  require  no  better  exposi- 
tion than  that  which  is  given  by  the  apostle,  when  he 
declares,*  that  as  many  as  commit  sin  without  law, 
[instituted  law]  shall  also  perish  without  the  same; 
and  that  only  such  as  sin  against  instituted  law  will  be 
judged  by  it;  for,  though  they  have  it  not,  they  are 
yet  a  law  [uninstituted]  to  themselves,  their  conscience 
bearing  witness  before  all  commandment,  and  apart 
from  all  administrative  enforcement.  What  he  means 
to  say  is,  that  their  moral  nature  itself  answers,  with 
inevitable  conviction,  to  the  eternal,  necessary  principle 
of  right ;  placing  them,  so  far,  in  a  condition  where  they 
are  a  law  to  themselves,  and  would  be  forever,  if  no 
rule,  or  judgment,  or  judge  from  without,  should  appear, 
to  authenticate,  or  vindicate,  the  obligation  they  feel. 

Let  us  now  conceive  it  possible,  that  God  and  all 
moral  natures  exist,  for  a  time,  under  this  ideal,  neces- 
sary law,  or  law  of  laws,  having  no 

/  The  Law  Abso- 

other;  that  government  is  not  yet  un-   lute   Supp08ed  to 
dertaken,  God  having  not  come  forth  rule  for  a  time  b>' 

itself. 

as  yet,  to  be  the  mamtainer  of  this  law, 
or  to  assume  it  as  the  change  of  his  voluntary  adminis- 
tration.    The  moral  natures,  in  this  view,  simply  exist 
upon  a  common  footing  of  necessary  obligation — bound, 
all  alike  and  together,  as  a  matter  of  inmost  conviction, 

*  Rom.  ii,  12-15. 


240  THE    LAW  PART  III. 

to  do  and  be  only  right.  I  do  not  say,  it  will  be  ob- 
served, that  the  law  moral  had  ever  any  such  prece- 
dence of  time,  or  any  but  a  precedence  of  order,  before 
the  fact  of  government  assumed.  Still  it  can  do  no 
harm  to  raise  the  supposition  of  such  precedence  in 
time,  if  we  are  careful  enough  to  use  it  only  as  a  means 
of  distinguishing  certain  points,  in  the  great  subject  we 
have  in  discussion,  that  could  not  be  as  well  distin- 
guished in  any  other  way. 

Having  thus  all  moral  natures  upon  this  common  foot- 
ing of  ideal,  necessary  law,  and  no  personal  authority, 
Obedienco  makes  °r  will-force  embarked,  as  yet,  in  the 
complete  society.  pUrpOse  to  govern  for  it  and  be  its  vin- 
dicator, one  of  two  things  will  be  the  result ;  either 
that  the  grand  impersonal  law  will  be  accepted  and 
obeyed,  or  else  that  it  will'  not.  God,  we  know,  will 
receive  it  in  everlasting  honor ;  for  exactly  that  he  has 
done  from  eternity ;  and  his  being  thus  united  to  the 
right,  fixedly  and  totally,  is  his  righteousness — the  sum, 
in  that  manner,  of  all  his  perfections.  If  created  minds 
and  orders  cleave  also  to  right,  in  the  same  way,  they 
will  be  instated  also  in  the  same  righteousness,  and 
so  in  the  same  perfections  with  God.  All  moral 
beings,  united  thus  in  their  homages  to  right,  will  be 
united  also  in  love ;  love  to  each  other,  and  love  to  the 
law,  by  which  they  are  set  in  society  and  ever- 
lasting chime  together,  as  in  ways  of  mutual  right- 
doing.  Indeed  the  necessary  and  absolute  law  of  right, 
thus  accepted,  is  very  nearly  answered  by  the  relational 
law  of  love ;  so  that  any  realm  of  being,  compacted  in 


CHAP.  I.  BEFORE    GOVERNMENT.  241 

right,  will  as  certainly  be  unified  in  love,  doing  and 
Buffering,  each  for  each,  just  what  the  most  self-immolat- 
ing, dearest  love  requires.  Even  God,  in  such  right- 
doing,  will  bend  himself  to  any  most  expensive,  lowest 
burden  of  sympathy,  for  the  benefit  and  well-being  of 
such  as  are  humblest  in  the  order  of  their  dignity.  The 
humblest  in  order,  too,  will  as  certainly  magnify  and 
worship  the  Infinite  Eight-Doer,  because  there  is  pro- 
portion in  their  sense  of  right — inspiring  an  homage 
that  looks  up  in  the  lowliest,  as  truly  as  a  way  of  sacri- 
fice that  looks  down  in  the  highest.  In  this  manner  the 
perfect,  universal  righteousness  will  organize  a  state  of 
everlasting  order  and  good  fellowship,  whose  ideal  we 
name,  in  the  words,  Complete  Society. 

But  there  is  another  alternative  ;  viz.,  that  some  one 
or  many  races  of  moral  natures,  in  the  state  of  imper- 
sonal law  we  have  described,  will  throw  consequences  if 
off  the  law,  and  break  loose  in  a  condi-     any  disobey, 
tion  of  unsubjection ;  and  here  it  becomes  a  very  import- 
ant matter,  as  regards  the  great  questions  we  have  now  in 
hand,  to  note  the  consequences  that  will  follow,  and  the 
new  kinds  of  work  and  office  that  will  be  undertaken. 

First  of  all,  the  internal  state  of  the  disobedient  race, 
or  races  of  moral  natures,  will  be  immensely  changed. 
As  certainly  as  they  are  broken  loose  from  right,  they 
will  be  chafing  in  the  bitter  consciousness  of  wrong, 
doing  wrong  to  each  other,  feeling  wrong,  contriving 
wrong,  writhing  in  the  pains  of  wrong.  Their  whole 
internal  state  will  be  under  a  nimbus  of  confusion.  For 
though  nothing  is  contrived  in  them  and  the  world  to 

21 


242  THE    LAW  PARTlII. 

have  a  retributive  reaction,  their  simply  being  moral 
natures  will  compel  them  to  suffer  a  tremendous  shock 
of  recoil.  There  will  be  a  terrible  disjunction  of  order 
in  their  parts  and  powers ;  so  that  what  they  call  their 
soul  will  be  scarcely  better  than  a  wrangle  of  contrarie- 
ties, or  cage  of  growling  antipathies.  As  to  any  self- 
restoration  that  will  be  effective,  it  is  quite  impossible. 
A  flock  of  birds  let  fly  could  much  less  easily  be  gath- 
ered back  from  all  the  remotest  points  of  heaven.  For 
the  internal  confusion  is  so  complex  and  wild — so  near- 
ly infinite — that  no  power  of  thought  can  conceive  it, 
or  how  it  should  be  set  in  the  recomposition  needed ; 
no  power  of  self-exertion  accomplish  the  recomposition, 
if  it  were  conceived.  The  whole  moral  nature,  in  short, 
is  so  far  abused  and  suffers  a  recoil  so  dreadful,  in  the 
rejection  of  its  law,  that  consciousness  itself  becomes  a 
mordant  element,  with  no  power  left  to  master  the 
self-corrosive  sublimation  of  its  wrong.  Not  that  in 
this  fall,  or  self-undoing,  it  suffers  any  thing  which  is 
called  justice,  under  the  political  analogies.  We  do 
not  know  that  it  suffers  any  thing  in  the  scale  of  desert, 
which  is  the  common  notion  of  justice;  we  only  know 
that  it  receives  a  shock  of  necessary  pain,  or  disorder, 
from  the  violation  of  an  immutable  idea,  that  belongs 
inherently  to  its  moral  nature.  If  necessity  does  not 
know  how  to  think,  or  any  way  get  up  a  scale  of  j  ustice, 
then  it  is  quasi  justice,  and  we  probably  can  not  say  more 
— only  the  necessity  of  it  is  too  absolute  to  be  avoided. 
"We  may  even  dare  to  say,  with  all  profoundest  rever- 
ence to  God,  that  if  He,  the  All-Holy,  were  to  cast  off 


CHAP.  I. 


BEFORE    GOVERNMENT.  243 


11 

Right — the  law  before  government — in  the  case  supposed, 

his  wrong  would  be  an  earthquake  shock,  strong  enough 

to  shiver  the  integrity  of  his  mold,  and  leave  him  a  wreck      1 1 

of  eternal  incapacity,  as  respects  both  wholeness  of  being 

and  a  recovered  harmony  in  good.     This,  not  because     *  ^ 

there  is  any  ordinance  of  justice  above  him,  but  that    V 

such  is  right,  and  such  his  moral  nature,  as  related  thereto  *  r 

— both  self-existent — that,  without  regard  to  justice,  the 

crystal  must  so  break,  by  its  own  necessary  law,  and  so 


He  must  irrecoverably  fall.     Thus,  too,  any  race  of  finite    ^     -     , 
moral  creatures,  falling  irrecoverably  in  the  same  way, 
would  be  not  less  fearfully  undone;  not  by  justice,  but 
only  by  the  inevitable  recoil  of  their  offended  moral      -2  j 
nature.  I'^s 

Secondly,  as  another  sad  consequence,  the  law  so  ^  ,  • 
much  loved  by  all  the  obedient  natures,  including  God, 
is  diminished  in  its  honor,  desecrated,  trampled,  and 
mocked,  and  their  minds  are  filled  with  deepest  concern 
for  it.  It  is  as  if  the  very  law  of  their  own  beatitude 
were  dying  under  its  wounds.  Asserting  itself  un- 
helped,  and  vindicated  by  no  force  but  its  own,  it  seems 
to  be  even  going  down,  or  vanishing  away. 

These  two  painful  and  disastrous  consequences  hav- 
ing arrived  under  the  law  before  government ;  viz.,  the 
fall  of  multitudes  beyond  any  power  of  God  will  institute 
self-redemption ;  and  the  law  itself  tram-  government  and  re- 
pled  in  dishonor;  is  there  any  thing  demption together' 
that  God  will  certainly  undertake?  His  infinite  right- 
eousness contains  the  answer ;  for  by  that  he  is  ever- 


244 


THE    LAW 


PART  II L 


lastingly    fastened,    in    profoundest    homage,    to    the 
law,  and  about  as  certainly  to  the  well-being  of  all 
moral  natures  related,  with  Himself,  to  the  law.     He 
will  therefore  regard  himself  as  elected,  by  his  own 
transcendent  powers  of  will  and  working,  to  assume  the 
charge  of  a  Euler,  and  will  institute  government ;  con- 
triving by  what  assertions  of  authority,  supported  by 
1  what  measures,  he  may  reinforce  the  impersonal  law, 
and  repair  its  broken  sway.     To  this  end  he  will  organ- 
ize a  complete  frame  of  statutes,  and  penalties,  and  mo- 
tivities  general,  for  the  will,  such  as  He,  the  Infinite 
Lord,   and  Head  Power  of  the   worlds,   may  count 
orthy  of  his  wisdom  and  universal  sovereignty — the 
ame  combination,  we  may  well  enough  suppose,  that 
We  have  to  admire  in  his  word  and  Providential  order 
low.     In  this  manner,  or  in  some  other  closely  related, 
,ve  shall  see  that  He  has  taken  the  government  upon 
his  shoulder. 

Nor  is  it  a  matter  very  widely  different,  that  he  will 
undertake  the  redemption,  or  restoration,  of  the  fallen 
race,  or  races ;  for  he  can  hardly  do  for  the  law  broken 
down  all  that  he  would,  without  recovering  the  disobe- 
dient to  their  full  homage  and  allegiance.  Besides,  they 
are  fellow-natures  with  Himself,  and  the  righteous  love 
he  bears  them  will  unite  him  to  their  fallen  state,  in 
acts  of  tenderest  sacrifice.  And  so  the  instituted  gov- 
ernment and  the  redeeming  sacrifice  will  begin  toge- 
ther, at  the  same  date  and  point,  and  work  together,  for 
J^rery  nearly  the  same  purpose.  .  In  the  largest  and  most 
i*  id  proper  view,  the  instituted  government  will  include  re- 

V  ./,''''' 


BEFORE    GOVERNMENT.  245 

demption  ;  for,  beginning  at  the  point  of 'transgression, 
already  broken  loose,  mere  legislative  and  judicial  ac- 
tion, plainly  enough,  can  not  bring  in  the  desired  state 
of  obedience.  Legislation  wants  redemption  for  its  co- 
adjutor, and  only  through  the  divine  sacrifice,  thus 
ministered,  can  it  ever  hope  to  consummate  the  proposed 
obedience.  Eedemption  also  wants  legislation,  to  back 
its  tender  appeals  of  sacrifice,  by  the  stern  rigors  of 
law.  Both  together  will  compose  the  state  of  complete 
government.  We  are  brought  out  thus  by  our  supposi- 
tion, upon  the  conception  of  a  redeeming  work,  under- 
taken, or  that  would  be  undertaken,  for  and  before  the 
ideal  law  of  right,  and  apart  from  any  conditions  of 
government,  previously  instituted,  or  violated.  Pre- 
cisely how,  or  by  what  plan,  the  restoring  agency  will 
operate,  we,  of  course,  do  not  know.  Doubtless  it  will 
involve  the  grand,  principal  fact,  that  God  is  in  vicari- 
ous sacrifice  ;  and,  if  that  is  best,  he  will  go  forward  in 
just  the  same  ways  of  sacrifice,  and  the  same  revela- 
tions of  love,  that  he  has  made  in  the  suffering  life  and 
death  of  Christ.  For  since  he  is  grounded,  as  respects 
all  his  perfections,  in  the  eternal  law  of  right  now 
cloven  down,  he  will  love  the  principle  itself,  and  love 
its  adherents,  and  love,  for  the  law's  sake,  as  well  as  for 
their  own,  all  the  transgressors  and  enemies  who  may 
haply  be  recovered  to  it.  And  so  we  shall  have  on 
foot  a  grand  work  of  redemptive  sacrifice,  that  has  no 
reference  whatever  to  claims  of  justice  previously  in- 
curred. The  problem  can  not,  therefore,  be  to  satisfy, 
or  pacify  justice,  but  simply  to  recompose  in  the  vio- 

21* 


246  THE    LAW  PART  III. 

lated  law  the  shattered,  broken  souls,  who  have  thrown 
down  both  themselves  and  it,  by  their  disobedience. 

A  beginning  will  probably  be  made  much  like  that 
of  the  Christian  history,  in  the  establishment  of  sacri- 
fices, the  sending  of  prophets,  the  strong  discipline  of 
Providential  judgments,  the  long  drilling  and  milling 
times  of  observances,  defeats,  and  captivities.  And 
then,  when  the  fullness  of  time  is  come,  we  may  look 
for  an  act  of  incarnation,  provided  any  thing  can  be 
so  accomplished ;  for  the  love  of  God  will  bring  him 
down  to  the  fallen,  and  a  life  in  the  flesh  among  them, 
just  as  it  has  done  in  Christ.  He  will  come  in  the 
very  spirit  of  the  law  rejected,  and  they  will  see,  in 
him,  how  good  and  beautiful  it  is,  and  what  burdens  of 
suffering  it  will  put  upon  him  to  bear  for  their  benefit. 
I  am  not  authorized  to  say  that,  in  the  peculiar  case 
supposed,  he  will  do  just  every  thing  which  he  has  done 
by  Christ  and  his  cross,  I  only  say  that  he  will  shrink 
from  no  sacrifice,  or  sorrow,  or  cross,  that  he  may  re- 
gain the  erring  ones  to  their  law,  and  have  them  re- 
established in  everlasting  righteousness.  And  there 
appears  to  be  no  reason  for  doubting,  that  he  will  go 
through  a  historic  chapter  of  vicarious  sacrifice,  closely 
correspondent,  with  that  which  is  transacted  in  Christ. 

Thus  far  onward  we  are  brought,  in  the  lead  of  a 
supposition.  Let  me  not  be  understood  as  resting  any 
thing  on  the  deductions  made,  beyond  what  the  certain 
fact  of  a  law  before  government  will  justify.  There 
is  really  no  such  precedence  in  time,  but  only  a  prece- 


CHAP.  I.  BEFORE    GOVERNMENT.  247 

dence  of  rational  order.  Instituted  government  is,  to 
all  created  subjects  of  God,  as  old  as  ideal  principle, 
and  they  never  had  a  moment  under  this,  before  coming 
under  the  other.  My  whole  object  in  tracing  this  sup- 
posed precedence  of  time,  has  been  simply  to  get  cer- 
tain distinctions  of  idea  unfolded,  that  will  serve  the  fu- 
ture uses  of  my  argument.  The  supposition  is  a  fiction, 
the  distinctions  are  profoundly  real  and  important- 
allowing  us  to  get  a  footing  for  the  subject,  where  it 
will  be  less  oppressively  dominated,  by  the  merely  po- 
litical, or  judicial  analogies. 

The  distinctions  of  idea  referred  to  are  such  as  these ; 
which  any  one  will  see  to  be  legitimated  conceptions  le- 
i  n  the  exposition  now  traced — legitimated,       gitimated. 
that  is,  as  conceptions,  though   not  established  as  ex- 
isting facts. 

1.  That  there  might  be  a  scheme  of  cross,  and  sacrifice, 
and  restoring  power,  every  way  like  that  which  is  exe- 
cuted in  Christ,  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  justice 
proper ;  being  related  only  to  that  quasi  justice  which 
is  the  blind  effect,  in  moral  natures,  of  a  violation 
of  their  necessary  law. 

2.  That  instituted  law  is  no  necessary  precondition 
of  redemption. 

3.  That  the  righteousness  of  God  is  not  by  any 
means  identical  with  his  justice,  but  includes  all  the 
perfections  of  God  in  his  relation  to  the  law  before 
government,  and  never  requires  him  to  execute  justice 
under  political  analogies,  save  as  it  first  requires  him  to 
institute  an  administrative  government  in  the  same. 


248  THE    LAW  PARTlIL 

4.  That  law  and  justice  might  be  instituted  as  co- 
factors  of  redemption,  having  it  for  their  object  to  sim- 
ply work  with  redemption,  and  serve  the  same  ends  of 
spiritual  renovation — if  there  was  a  prior  fall,  under 
the  law  before  government,  they  naturally  would  be. 

5.  That  justification  need  not  have  any  reference  to 
God's  justice,  and  probably  has  not,  but  only  to  a  re- 
connection,  by  faith,  with  the  righteousness  of  God,  and 
a  consciously  new  confidence,  in  the  sense  of  that  con- 
nection. 

It  will  probably  have  occurred  to  some  readers,  in 
conjunction  with  what  has  here  been  said  of  the  law 
before  government,  to  inquire  how  far, 
the  story  of  the  and  in  what  manner,  it  coincides  with 
the  Scripture  representation  of  the  origi- 
nal trial-state  of  man?  Here,  to  the  human  race  at 
least  begins  the  instituted  government  of  God.  It 
comes  in  as  no  after  thought,  to  supplement  the  insuffi- 
ciency of  an  ideal  law  which  is  older.  In  the  breath- 
ing of  the  first  breath,  this  also  arrives,  and  the  living 
soul  is  not  complete  in  its  moral  equipment,  sooner 
than  it  is  put  in  authority  by  God's  paternal  keeping 
and  commandment.  Still  it  will  be  more  convenient 
and  rational,  not  to  regard  the  fall  as  literally  beginning 
at  the  breach  of  a  merely  instituted,  almost  arbitrary, 
apparently  trivial  statute,  such  as  by  the  common  un- 
derstanding we  have  in  the  statute  of  the  tree,  but  to 
regard  the  real  breach  as  beginning  at  the  everlasting 
law-principle  hid  in  that  statute,  and  violated  in  the 
violation  of  it. 


CHAP.I.  BEFORE    GOVERNMENT.  249 

This  third  chapter  of  Genesis  is  taken,  by  many  schol- 
ars who  are  not  given,  at  all,  to  the  mythical  interpreta- 
tions, as  being,  in  some  proper  sense,  a  myth.  They 
discover  a  mythologic  air  in  the  story,  and  note  a  plain 
distinction  of  manner  between  it  and  the  historic  chap- 
ters that  follow,  or  indeed  between  it  and  all  other 
Scripture  beside.  Nor  is  it  any  just  offense  that  such  a 
conception  is  admitted  ;  for  a  myth  may  as  well  be  the 
vehicle  of  truth  as  any  other  form  of  language — be  it 
epic,  or  ode,  or  parable,  or  fable.  The  sin  of  imputing  a 
myth  is  when  it  is  done  against  the  fact  of  history,  and 
not  when  it  is  the  proper  organ  of  history.  And  it 
may  be  that  a  myth  occurs  in  revelation,  just  because 
there  is,  at  the  time,  no  culture  of  thought,  and  phi- 
losophy, and  reflective  reason,  deep  enough  to  express, 
or  conceive  the  matter  given,  in  a  way  of  didactic  state- 
ment. It  is,  in  fact,  historic,  because  it  is  the  form  of 
story  for  a  matter  profoundly  abstruse  in  its  nature, 
and  possible  to  be  conceived,  as  yet,  in  no  other  form. 

It  comes  out  accordingly,  laboring  under  such  limita- 
tions of  thought  and  culture,  that  the  eternal  law  of 
right  is  a  tree,  and  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil  a 
fruit  that  hangs  on  it,  and  the  declared  threatenings  of 
death,  notifications  of  the  consequences  otherwise  un- 
known. Temptation  figures  in  the  story  as  a  serpent, 
and  the  new-begun  race  are  summoned  to  a  conflict  with 
him,  and  an  assured  triumph  over  him.  Then  pass  out 
the  sad  pair,  excluded  from  all  possible  self-recovery,  as 
if  fenced  away  by  the  flashing  swords  of  cherubim,  to 
work  and  suffer,  and  conquer,  as  God  and  his  Son  will 
help  them. 


250  THE    LAW  PART  in. 

Now  there  seems  to  be  a  peculiar  fitness  in  conceiv- 
ing the  first  sin  to  be  thus  specially  concerned  with  the 
original  law  of  duty — the  law  before 

The  Fall  special- 

iy  related  to  the  government — because  that  law  is  really 
Law   before  gov-   pronounced  in  the  simple  fact  of  being 

ernment.  _.    .     . 

a  moral  nature.  Existing  as  a  moral 
nature,  a  man,  Adam  was  already  in  that  law,  and  the 
issuing  of  any  command  or  prohibition,  regarding  a 
matter  of  action,  would  bind  him,  only  as  an  executory 
application  of  that  law.  Not  even  killing,  under  the 
statute  "  thou  shalt  not  kill,"  becomes  a  crime  of  mur- 
der, save  as  the  perpetrator  is  found  to  have  connected 
the  statute  with  the  prior  law  of  laws,  and  done  the 
deed  as  a  wrong,  by  "  malice  aforethought."  No  par- 
ticular act  is  sinful,  save  as  the  prior  law  of  right  is  im- 
plicitly violated  in  it.  It  makes  no  difference,  therefore, 
whether  the  forbidden  tree  be  taken  as  a  mythic  concep- 
tion of  the  law  before  government,  or  as  an  arbitrary, 
outward  test  of  obedience  in  particular  action ;  for  no 
such  test  could  touch  the  sense  of  obligation,  save  as  it 
implicitly  came  under,  and  carried  along  with  it,  the 
already  felt  obligation  of  right.  All  the  statutes  we 
speak  of  are  executory  of  this  law,  else  they  are  noth- 
ing. Any  fall  must  be  transacted  really  before  this 
law ;  for  the  guilt  of  breaking  any  law  creates  a  fall, 
only  as  this  grand,  all-inclusive  law  is  cast  off,  and  the 
regulative  principle  of  the  life  is  changed.  Be  it  touch- 
ing a  tree,  or  tasting  a  fruit,  the  sin  has  all  its  meaning 
in  the  fact  that  everlasting  right  is  cast  away,  and  the 
golden  harmony  of  right  dissolved. 


CHAP.  I.  BEFORE    GOVERNMENT.  251 

This  being  true,  I  see  not  any  way  of  describing  a 
fact  so  deep,  and,  for  ages,  so  far  beyond  the  possible 
conception  of  men,  that  could  be  at  all  equal  to  this 
paradise,  and  tree,  and  fruit,  and  fall,  and  final  expul- 
sion, and  flashing  sword  of  cherubim.  The  profound 
reality  of  the  fall  must,  in  any  view,  have  been  passed 
before  the  eternal,  inborn  law  of  right,  and  the  death 
and  the  curse  that  followed,  signify  a  great  deal  more 
as  declaratives  of  natural  consequence,  in  such  a  break- 
ing out  of  law,  than  they  can,  AS  penal  sentences  of 
desert,  in  the  matter  of  tasting  a  fruit. 

Here  then  is  the  want  and  true  place  of  redemption. 
It  must  have  some  primary  and  even  principal  reference 
to  the  law  before  government,  and  not  to  any  instituted 
law,  or  statute,  or  judicial  penalty  existing  under  that. 
Every  thing  God  does  in  his  legislations,  and  punish- 
ments, and  Providential  governings  of  the  world,  is  fl 
done  to  fortify  and  glorify  the  Law  before  Government.  ^*jr 
All  that  he  will  do,  in  redemptive  suffering  and  sac-^jj? 
rifice,  revolves  about  this  prior  Everlasting  Law,  in  the  ^  L. 
same  manner.     In  this  law  his  supreme  last  ends  are  /  >. 
gathered  ;  out  of  this  law  all  his  beatitudes  and  perfec-  ^ 
tions  have  their  spring.     No  so  great  thing  as  redemp-  -"v    j 

tion  can  have  principal  respect  to  any  thing  else. 


&  /tA+b« 


CHAPTER  II. 

INSTITUTED  GOVERNMENT. 

WHAT  is  to  be  understood  by  God's  instituted  gov- 
ernment has  been  already  indicated  in  a  general  way ; 

instituted  Gov  ^  we  ar6  *°  conceive  ^  more  accurately, 
ernment^-what  it  we  must  first  of  all,  distinguish  what  is 
included  in  a  moral  nature  as  being 
necessary  to  it ;  and  then  all  that  we  find  superadded, 
or  conjoined  to  it,  will  be  the  administrative  matter 
God  has  instituted,  as  a  religious  polity  for  the  world. 
A  moral  nature,  in  the  closest  sense  of  the  term,  ap- 
pears to  be  no  matter  of  divine  contrivance,  more  than 
the  circles  are  in  which  the  heavens  are  set — it  must  be 
a  nature  that  can  think  the  everlasting  law,  and  has  lib- 
erty of  will  to  reject,  or  embrace  it.  God  is  not  ob- 
liged to  create  this  moral  nature,  but  if  such  a  nature  in 
to  be  created,  it  can  not,  as  far  as  the  necessary  idea  is 
concerned,  be  either  less  or  different.  But  there  is 
room  outside  of  this,  for  a  large  creative  outfit  and 
providential  management,  where  contrivance,  and  coun- 
sel, and  statute,  and  judgment,  and  all  that  belongs  to 
an  administrative  polity  may  get  ample  range  of  op- 
portunity. And  here  we  find  the  instituted  govern- 
ment of  God.  In  this  government,  counsel  and  will 


CHAP.  II.         INSTITUTED^JdVEENMENT.    *  253       ,  ^ ., 

are  added,  to  ^mtainJme  everlasting  law.     God  un-  x   Jr  IQl^ 

dertakes,  in  this,  to  be  its  Guardian  and  Vindicator, 
making  specific  applications,  adding  retributive  enforce- 
ments, casting  soul  and  body,  as  far  as  contrivance  may, 
and  arranging  the  whole  economy  of  causes,  to  throw 
the  strongest  possible  motives  on  the  side  of  right,  and 
against  the  choice  of  wrong,  ojrttontmuallc^inj.t._  r*Jr 

Inasmuch,    too,    as    the    govenniieirTTne  institutes, 
looks  beyond  mere  ideas  of  legal  enforcement,  com- 
prehending, or  at  least  associating,  pur- 
Comprehends 
poses  of  recovery,  he  will  incorporate  a     iaw>     penalty, 

grand  machinery  of  discipline,  and  also  Providence,  and  ^^ 
of  reconciliation,  working  by  all  the 
secret  griefs  of  persons,  and  public  woes  of  society — by 
the  migrations  of  conquered  peoples,  by  the  persecu- 
tions of  religion,  by  the  oppressions  of  governments, 
by  the  wars  and  rebellions  overruled.  And  then  to 
these  he  will  add,  for  the  same  final  end,  what  is  more 
effective  than  all  discipline,  the  incarnate  mission  of 
Christ,  and  all  Christly  causes,  the  mission  also  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  with  all  Spirit-causes  threading  the  world's 
bosom ;  the  church  also,  the  word,  life,  death,  resurrec- 
tion, and  eternal  judgment.  The  matter  is  large,  but 
solidly  compacted  in  God's  eternal  counsel,  not  intelligi- 
ble always  to  us,  but  intelligible  to  Him — good  as 
intelligible ;  because  it  is  the  solemn  ordering  of  his 
will,  for  the  one  good  end  of  right. 

That  we  may  conceive  the  nature  and  offices  of  this 
instituted  government  more  exactly,  let  us  note  a  few 
points  that  will  require  to  be  observed,  in  the  right 

22 


254  INSTITUTED    GOVERNMENT.         PART  III. 

understanding  of  the  relation  it  holds  to  the  law  before 
government,  and  also  farther  on,  to  the  vicarious  sac- 
rifice and  free  salvation  of  Christ. 

1.  Let  it  be  observed  that  law  and  obligation  do  not 
begin  with  God's  will,  and  are  not  created  by  his  will. 
Law  exists  be-  ^  appears  to  be  the  supposition  of  many, 
fore  God's  will.  that  GO(J  creates  all  law  by  his  will,  and 
can  make  any  thing  right,  or  obligatory,  by  his  enact- 
ment. Contrary  to  this  he  makes  nothing  obligatory 
which  is  not  right,  or  somehow  helpful  to  right,  en- 
acting nothing  in  which  he  is  not  first  commanded,  as 
regards  the  principle,  by  that  everlasting,  ideal  law,  in 
which  even  his  goodness  itself  is  fashioned.  In  one 
view,  all  the  statutes  he  enacts  are  explicatory,  simply, 
of  the  law  before  government.  In  another  view,  they 
are  only  vindicatory  of  the  same.  So  that  the  one  fun- 
damental precept  of  right  contains,  or  demands,  in  a 
way  of  organic  enforcement,  all  the  statutes  ordained ; 
having  these  for  its  complete  explication,  or  fulfillment, 
and  being  fitly  vindicated  by  the  executive  energy  of 
these.  The  law  before  government  measures,  in  this 
manner,  all  the  law  declared  by  government,  only  it 
obtains  an  immense  accession  of  authority  by  the  spec- 
ifications in  which  it  is  drawn  out,  and  the  sanctions  of 
God's  infinite  will  superadded  for  its  enforcement. 

It  is  a  great  mistake  of  multitudes,   and  one  that 

amounts  well  nigh  to  a  superstition,  that  they  take  the 

Decalogue  not   decalogue,  or  ten  commandments,  for  the 

fundamental,    fundamental  law  of  duty  and  religion, 

back  of  which  there  is  no  first  principle  more  radical, 


CHAP.  II.          INSTITUTED    GOVERNMENT.  255 

or  inclusive.  Just  contrary  to  this,  they  are  most  of 
them  statutes  reenacted  from  the  common  law  maxims, 
prevalent  among  the  people  to  whom  they  are  given. 
Indeed,  they  have  a  great  part  of  their  excellence, 
in  that  which  is  their  defect ;  viz.,  in  their  merely  pre- 
ventive, negative  form ;  running,  all  but  one  of  them — 
"thou  shalt  not,"  "thou  shalt  not,  "—as  if  made  for  a 
people  who  had  lost  all  sense  of  obligation  to  the  posi- 
tive good  of  a  well-doing,  right-doing  life,  and  could 
only  be  reached,  by  commanding  them  away  from 
wrongs  they  love  to  practice.  In  the  one  positive  stat- 
ute— "  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God,  and  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself,"  there  was  really  something  funda- 
mental ;  it  was  in  fact  the  law  of  laws ;  but  for  just  that 
reason,  it  was  too  much,  and  the  ten  particular  nega- 
tives signified  more  to  such  low  servile  natures,  be- 
cause of  their  contracted  quantity  and  minatory  sound. 
2.  The  instituted  government  differs  from  the  law 
before  government,  in  the  fact  that  it  inaugurates  jus- 
tice and  penal  sanctions.  There  is  no  Jugtice  pertains 
express  sanction  to  vindicate  the  law  to  instituted  GOV- 
absolute,  and  no  definitely  understood 
sanction.  Certain  effects  of  disorder  and  pain  would 
follow  disobedience,  but  that  they  would  follow  in  any 
scale  of  desert,  we  do  not  know.  The  justice  they  will 
execute,  therefore,  is  only  a  blind  quasi  justice,  if  it  be 
any  thing  which  deserves  the  name.  But  the  insti- 
tuted government  of  God  is  fast  anchored  in  the  terms 
of  justice,  declaring  definite  penalties,  and  maintaining 
them  with  impartial  exactness.  It  rules  by  the  majes- 


256  INSTITUTED    GOVERNMENT.         PART  IIL 

tic  will-force  of  God,  asserted  in  its  statutes  and  pen- 
alties. And,  in  this  fact,  it  gains  a  mighty  accession  of 
power  ;  especially  when  considered  as  in  reference  to 
minds  already  broken  loose  from  obedience. 

In  one  view,  it  was  the  beauty  and  dignity  of  the 
impersonal  law,  that  it  spoke  only  by  its  own  excel- 
lence, with  no  adventitious,  or  external  compulsions  to 
help  it.  It  would  rule  by  what  it  is,  and  not  by  what 
will  be  done  for  it  when  violated.  In  this  manner  it 
7  \A«r  would  most  fitly  address  ^ghteou^f  minds  ;  speaking  to 


them  even  as  it  does  to  God.     No  sanctions  appealing 
to  interest,  or  fear,  would  be  at  all  appropriate  to  them, 
but  would  even  be  a  mockery  rather  of  their  liberty  ; 
for  to  be  in  the  right  is  already  their  choice,  and  they 
even  as  God  does,  because  it  is  right.     Enforce- 
ments  are  wholly  out  of  place,  till  such  time  as  they 
are   sunk  away  from  right  into  the  lower  ranges  of 
where  the  smart  of  justice  and  its  jpenal 
sanc^ons  Becomes  fit  argument  for  them.     To  arrest 
to-.  them  now  and  turn  them  back,  on  such  kind  of  con- 

sideration as  prepares  them  to  be  taken  with  the  love 
of  goodness  and  right  for  their  own  sake,  is  the  first 
thing  wanted.  Nothing  will  answer  for  them,  in  a 
way  of  being  recovered,  but  to  have  their  collision 
with  a  government  fortified  by  sanctions  penally  threat- 
ened  and  judically  executed.  And  this  brings  me  to 
say- 

3.  That  instituted  government,  if  not  taken  in  the 
large  view  as  containing,  is  the  necessary  co-factor  of, 
redemption.  By  it  the  law  before  government  is  reen- 


Wt^rt* 

* 


CHAP.  II.          INSTITUTED    GOVERNMENT.  257 

acted,  or  applied  specifically,  and  the  definitely  en- 
forced applications  are  so  many  points  of  obligation 
impressed.  The  soul  therefore,  living  ,_. 

0        Ine  necessary 

under  sin,  can  not  drum  itself  to  sleep  in   co-factor  of  re- 
mere  generalities  of  wrong;  for  it  hears 
condemning  thunders  breaking  in  from  almost  every 
point  of   duty  in  the  scheme  of   life.      The  moral 
sense  too  is  mightily  quickened  by  the  arrival  of  jus-  . 

tice,  and  the  tremendous  energy  in  which  it  comes.  >^\ 

For  it  is  a  great  mistake  to  imagine  that  the  sanctions 
of  justice  are  valuable  only  as  intimidations^  They  are  jj/j 
God's  strange  work,  and  the  fearful  earnestness  they 
show  raises  our  moral  impressions,  or  convictions,  to 
the  highest  pitch  of  tensity.  Capital  punishments,  in 
the  civil  state  have  their  value,  in  the  same  way,  not  in 
merely  making  it  fearfully  perilous  to  commit  the 
crime  so  punished,  but  a  great  deal  more  in  the  tremen- 
dous reverberation  raised  in  our  moral  nature,  when  the 
public  law  utters  its  opinion  of  the  crime,  in  sanctions 
so  appalling.  Operating  in  these  ways,  to  enforce  and 
sharpen  moral  conviction,  the  Scriptures  are  always 
conceiving  the  instituted  law  as  a  necessary  co-factor 
in  the  matter  of  redemption.  It  is  even  declared,  to 
be  "  not  made  for  a  righteous  man,  but  for  the  lawless 
and  disobedient ;"  as  if  it  were  set  like  the  cherubim 
before  Paradise,  to  flash,  and  cut,  and  drive  away,  and 
pen  the  guilty  in  their  outcast  lot.  So  far  the  insti- 
tuted government  is  law  for  the  sake  of  redemption. 
It  is  called,  indeed,  "  the  letter  that  killeth,"  "  the 
ministration  of  condemnation;"  but  the  meaning  is 

22* 


258  INSTITUTED    GOVERNMENT.         PART  IIL 

simply,  that  the  knowledge  of  sin  is  by  it,  and  that 
when  a  soul  is  truly  slain  by  the  law,  it  is  only  the 
more  ready  to  be  quickened  by  the  faith  of  a  gratuitous 
mercy.  Good  in  itself  it  becomes  death  unto  the  sub- 
ject, that  sin  may  appear  sin,  according  to  its  now 
discovered  perversity  and  exceeding  sin  fulness.  And 
so — this  is  the  gospel  outline — "  what  the  law  could 
not  do  in  that  it  was  weak,  through  the  flesh  [or  fallen 
state  of  sin]  God  sending  his  Son,  in  the  likeness  of 
sinful  flesh,  and  [to  be  a  Saviour]  for  sin,  condemned  sin 
in  the  flesh,  that  the  righteousness  of  the  law  [even  the 
eternal  righteousness  of  God]  might  be  fulfilled  in  us, 
who  walk  not  after  the  flesh  but  after  the  Spirit." 

There  is  also  still  another  point  of  view,  in  which 

the  instituted  government  of  God  works  redemptively. 

All  the  previous  history  of  the  world. 

Includes   world- 
government  as  co-   from  the   creation   downward,   till   the 

factorwithredemp-  funness  of  time  for  Christ  is  come;  all 

tion. 

the  migrations,  deliverances,  captivities; 
all  the  callings,  and  covenants,  and  prophetic  inspira- 
tions, have  been  managed  to  bring  on  the  fit  day,  and 
get  the  preparations  ready.  And,  besides  all  this,  the 
people  have  had  a  religion  organized  by  statute,  and 
been  drilling  in  rites  and  observances,  divinely  or- 
dered— all  profoundly  related  to  the  grand  vicarious 
sacrifice  to  come.  In  this  manner,  the  religious  mind 
has  been  cast  in  the  mold  of  Christian  ideas,  and  a 
language  has  been  provided,  otherwise  impossible,  on 
artificial  roots,  for  the  reception  and  perpetual  publica- 
tion of  the  new  gospel.  God's  instituted  law  therefore, 


CHAP.  II.          INSTITUTED    GOVERNMENT.  259 

instead  of  being  a  simply  killing  agency,  a  ministration 
of  death,  was  in  fact,  casting  molds  of  life  from  the 
first,  and  commanding  on,  so  to  speak,  unto  the  great 
salvation.  Christ  never  could  have  come,  in  fact,  if  the 
law  had  not  been  casting  patterns  for  him,  and  getting 
ready  all  the  great  external  matters  of  the  world's  em- 
pire. Again — 

4.  It  is  important,  at  this  early  point,  to  notice  a  dis- 
tinction which  will  often  be  recurring  in  the  future 
stages  of  the  argument;  viz.,  the  dis-  Rightcon8neM 
tinction  between  righteousness  and  jus-  and  Justice  dis- 
tice.  Thus  the  righteousness  of  God  is  tineuished- 
the  rightness  of  God,  before  the  eternal,  self-existent 
law  of  right ;  and  the  justice  of  God  is  the  vindicatory 
firmness  of  God,  in  maintaining  his  own  instituted  law. 
One  is  by  obedience  to  a  law  before  God's  will ;  the 
other  is  by  the  retributive  vindication  of  a  law  that  is 
under  and  by  God's  will  itself.  One  is  without  option, 
before  immutable,  unconditioned,  everlasting  law ;  the 
other  is  what  God  wills  and  does,  in  the  world  of  con- 
ditions, that  is  of  means  and  measures.  God  must  be 
righteous;  God  will  be  just.  That  he  must  be,  because 
it  is  right ;  this  he  will  be,  because  he  has  undertaken 
to  maintain  the  right  and  govern  for  it.  There  is  the 
character  from  which  he  rules ;  here  is  the  reason  of 
polity  by  which  he  rules.  Without  that,  he  could  not 
be  himself;  without  this  he  can  not  administer  a  govern- 
ment that  will  command  his  subjects.  Eighteousness  is 
necessary  to  the  endowment  of  his  person ;  justice  is 
necessary  for  a  wholly  different  reason ;  one  for  the 


260  INSTITUTED    GOVERNMENT.         PART  III. 

reason  of  character,  the  other  for  the  reason  of  polity. 
Nothing  can  ever  dispense  with  that;  this  can  be  tem- 
pered only  by  that  which  conspires  with  it,  working  for 
the  same  ends.  Eighteousness  in  God  accordingly  is 
satisfied  only  with  righteousness  in  men;  justice  is  sat- 
isfied with  whatever  makes  good  the  dishonors  of  vi- 
olated law,  working  with  it,  to  fulfill  its  end. 

The  justice  of  God  is  grounded  in  the  wants  of  his 
government ;  being  that  which  enforces  it,  that  which 
creates  respect  for  it,  and  for  the  ruler,  and  gives  the 
emphasis  of  immovable  authority  to  his  word  and  will. 
He  must  govern  by  no  fast  and  loose  method,  surrender 
nothing  to  chance,  or  caprice,  or  the  inability  to  inflict 
pain.  And  so  he  must  command  a  character  of  justice 
for  his  government,  even  as  he  has  a  character  of  right- 
eousness for  himself,  in  the  everlasting,  immovable 
adhesion  of  his  nature  to  right. 

5.  It  is  another  distinction  of  God's  instituted  gov- 
ernment, that,  while  the  law  before  government  is  im- 
personal, this  is  intenselv  personal,  and 

Instituted    Gov-    *  ' 

emment  is  person-  finally  becomes  a  person,  or  scarcely 
^virtually  a  per-  different  from  a  person.  I  have  already 
spoken  of  the  fact  that,  being  from  the 
will  of  God,  it  takes  on,  so  far,  a  personal  character. 
What  I  would  now  say  is  more ;  viz.,  that  we  commonly 
do  not  go  back  of  God,  when  we  think  of  his  govern- 
ment— never  do  it,  in  fact,  save  when  we  are  occupied 
reflectively  on  its  grounds  and  reasons — but  we  practi- 
cally take  God  for  his  government,  and  his  government 
for  God.  It  is  now  a  wholly  concrete  affair,  and  no 


CHAP.  II.          INSTITUTED    GOVERNMENT.  261 

more  an  abstraction.  In  this  manner,  it  gets  vivacity, 
and  a  look  of  reciprocity.  We  do  not  like,  in  fact,  to 
call  it  a  government,  for  that  is  not  relational  enough 
to  meet  our  feeling,  but  we  drop  the  institutional  con- 
ception, taking  up  the  personal,  and  calling  it  King — 
God  is  King,  that  is  government  enough;  and  we 
prefer  to  let  our  mind  be  occupied  wholly  with  his 
royalties  and  the  homage  due  to  his  attributes.  More 
intensely,  because  externally  personal,  the  government 
is  still  to  become;  for  Christ  will  be  visible  Messiah, 
that  is  visible  King,  King  of  Eighteousness  and  so  of 
Peace;  whereupon,  beholding  the  government  now 
upon  his  shoulder,  we  shall  crown  him  gladly  with  our 
invocation — "Give  the  King  thy  judgments,  0  God, 
and  thy  righteousness  unto  the  King's  son."  Nor  will 
the  glorious  kingship  be  any  the  less  personal  and  ten- 
derly dear,  that  being  withdrawn  from  sight,  he  is  sub- 
stituted by  the  Holy  Spirit  invisible,  going  through  all 
things,  and  present  every  where;  for  he  will  be  the 
Spirit  of  Christ  shed  forth  on  us  by  Christ,  and  main- 
taining, in  the  very  center  of  our  hearts,  a  Kingdom 
which -is  righteousness,  and  peace,  and  joy  in  the  Holy 
Ghost. 

It  is  sufficiently  obvious,  from  these  specifications, 
that  the  instituted  government  of  God  is  a  matter  of 
no  secondary  interest,  compared  with  Absolute  neces. 
the  law  before  government  in  which  it  »ity  of  instituted 
is  grounded.  It  is  the  mental  habit  of  g°verament- 
some,  to  be  specially  pleased  with  that  which  is  back  in 


262  INSTITUTED    GOVERNMENT.         PART  III. 

the  field  of  abstractions ;  and  such  might  think  it  better 
to  have  only  the  ideal  law,  without  any  polity  of  con- 
crete government  organized  to  enforce  it.  In  which,  un- 
der the  pretext  of  depth,  they  take  up,  in  fact,  the  most 
superficial  judgment  possible.  They  consent,  in  this, 
to  let  go  just  that  without  which  existence  itself 
were  of  no  value ;  for  how  soon  should  we  cast  off  the 
ideal  law  in  some  experiment  of  disobedience,  and  then 
our  moral  nature  itself  is  a  broken  affair,  past  all  power 
of  self-recovery.  Without  redemption  existence  is  val- 
ueless, and  there  is  no  redemption  without  an  instituted 
government. 

But  there  comes  in  here  from  an  opposite  direction, 

or  from  within  the  fold  of  the  gospel  itself,  a  class  of 

Dangers   appre-  theological  objectors,  who  apprehend  a 

hended  from  the  compiete  sweeping  away  of  God's  insti- 

remiasion    of    sins  * 

without  compensa-  tuted  law  and  justice,  by  the  free  remis- 
sion of  sins.     I  propose   no  'argument 
just  here  with  their  objections,  I  will  only  state  them 
that  they  may  not  seem  to  be  overlooked. 

Thus  they  insist  that,  if  Christ  does  not  bear  the 

penalties  of  sins  himself,  and  yet  takes  them  away  from 

Law  becomes    ^e   gu^ty,  he  thereby  also  takes  away 

only  advice.     a}]  (jue  enforcements  of  law,  and  leaves 

the  precept  to  be  mere  advice.     Where  go  the  laws  of 

God,  when  the  penalties  of  transgression  are  remitted 

gratis ,  by  universal  proclamation,  and  the  promise  given 

to  every  transgressor  that  he  shall  even  be  justified? 

What  could  any  civil  state,  or  government  hope,  from  a 

law  punishing  assassination  by  death,  and  promulgating, 


CHAP.  II.          INSTITUTED    GOVERNMENT.  263 

at  the  same  time,  a  free  pardon  to  every  criminal  su- 
ing for  it? 

In  confirmation  of  their  argument,  they  also  remind 
us  that  when  certain  teachers,  claiming  a  more  than 
common  illumination,  toss  all  such  objections  aside,  ex- 
tolling it  as  one  of  the  fine  things  in  Christ,  that  he 
finds  government  enough  in  God's  love  and  paternity, 
and  is  willing  to  let  go  what  are  called  the  Jewish  rigors, 
the  effects  are  such  as  to  show  most  convincingly  the 
essential  lightness  of  the  doctrine.  A  proper  insight  of 
human  nature,  saying  nothing  of  the  gospel,  ought, 
they  contend,  to  open  our  eyes  to  a  discovery  of  what 
is  more  competent ;  for  to  make  a  government  of  mere 
love  and  paternity  is,  in  fact,  to  make  just  no  govern- 
ment at  all,  but  is,  simply  to  throw  the  whole  matter  of 
duty  and  character  loose  upon  the  chances  of  a  coaxing 
process,  where  the  subject,  living  in  a  lower  plane, 
has  too  little  care  for  the  goodness  shown  him,  to  get 
any  thing  out  of  it,  but  a  license  of  impunity  for  what- 
ever he  likes  best.  In  such  doctrine  there  is  no  ring  of 
conviction.  God  and  religion  die  out  of  it,  and  a  cer- 
tain modishness  of  philanthropy  is  all  that  can  long 
remain. 

The  objectors  also  vary  their  argument,  alleging  that 
when  God  forgives  sin,  without  some  penal  satisfaction, 
his  rectoral  honor  and  character  are  God's  rectorai 
made  equivocal,  if  not  fatally  dimin-  honor  surrendered. 
ished.  Sin  they  say,  and  truly,  tramples  the  honor  of 
God.  If  then  he  farther  consents  to  let  it  do  so,  what 
becomes  of  his  authority  and  respect  as  a  ruler?  To 


264  INSTITUTED    GOVERNMENT.         PART  III. 

vindicate  the  integrity  of  liis  position  by  punishments 
duly  enforced,  would  countervail  the  dishonors  of 
transgression.  But  what  becomes  of  his  honor  and 
rectoral  authority,  when  his  threatenings  turn  out  to  be 
but  a  mock  ammunition,  in  which  there  is  no  pro- 
jectile included?  Who  will  be  awed  by  his  will 
when  he  governs  only  in  terror  em,  with  the  terror,  in 
fact,  omitted? 

Again  the  righteousness  of  God  appears,  they  say,  to 
be  made  equivocal,  in  the  same  manner.  He  com- 

His  Kighteous-  mands  what  is  right to  be  done>  because 
ness  made  equiv-  it  is  right,  and  because  right  is  an  ever- 
lasting and  absolute  law  in  its  own 
nature — necessary  to  all  created  mind,  necessary  even  to 
himself.  About  this  grand  ideal  of  right  he  builds 
the  whole  fabric  of  his  government ;  all  his  laws  assert 
and  interpret  this ;  all  his  penalties  enforce  this ;  all  his 
judgments  are  the  discipline  he  wields  for  this.  What 
then  does  it  signify  that  he  freely  remits  all  the  possible 
wrongs  of  wrong-doing,  as  against  his  great  central 
principle  of  right,  or  righteousness?  The  principle, 
indeed,  is  none  the  less  right ;  it  is  only  deserted ;  that 
too  by  Him  who  undertook  to  be  its  vindicator  and 
defender.  The  enforcement  is  now  gone,  and  with  it, 
what  was  more  impressive,  the  solid  majesty  of  that 
greatness,  which  itself  was  built  up  in  the  principle  of 
it,  and  stood  in  sacred  awe  before  the  eyes  of  all  crea- 
tures, as  the  unchangeable  Righteousness. 

It  is  another  variation  also  of  the  damage  or  loss  they 
discover  in  God's  rectoral  character,  that  the  supposed 


CHAP.  II.         INSTITUTED    GOVEKNMENT.  265 

free-remission  is  not  only  a  discontinuance  of  his  op- 
erative justice,  but  appears  to  blur  the  evidences  of 
justice,  in  his  character.  The  power  of  God's  justice  ob- 
God's  attitude,  before  his  subjects  will  be  Iterated, 
determined,  to  a  great  extent,  they  allege,  and  truly,  by 
the  impression  he  makes  of  his  immovable  adhesion  to 
justice.  The  punishments  denounced  against  trans- 
gression will  themselves  have  a  certain  deterring  force, 
as  being  denounced,  but  a  vastly  greater  force  comes 
into  impression,  whether  in  the  civil  state  or  in  the 
government  of  God  over  souls,  when  justice  is  duly 
exalted  and  consecrated,  by  what  may  be  called  the 
dread  sacrifice  and  strange  work  of  punishment.  There 
is  such  majesty  in  justice  thus  consecrated,  that  moral 
natures  feel  it  all  through  and  tremble  responsively  to 
it.  Punishments  have  a  certain  value,  as  appeals  to 
fear,  and  as  motives  addressed  to  self-interest,  but  the 
sense  of  goodness,  armed  by  justice,  strikes  into  the 
moral  nature  itself  far  more  deeply  an<J  by  an  immedi- 
ate efficacy.  It  can  not  therefore  be  taken  away  with- 
out great  apparent  loss. 

In  arguments  like  these,  showing  the  probability  of 
damage  to  the  integrity  and  authority  of  God's  govern- 
ment, from  a  free  remission  of  sins,  coupled  with  no 
penal  satisfaction  of  justice,  there  is,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, an  appearance  of  reason.  How  far  it  is  an 
appearance  deduced  from  political  analogies,  that  will 
disappear  when  such  analogies  are  duly  qualified,  will 
be  hereafter  seen. 

23 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  ANTAGONISM  BETWEEN  JUSTICE  AND  MERCY. 

CERTAIN  points  were  stated,  in  the  close  of  the  last 
chapter,  where  the  integrity  of  law  and  justice  appears 
to  be  involved  in  necessary  damage  from  the  introduc- 
tion of  forgiveness,  or  a  free  justification.  Under  the 
various  schemes  of  judical  satisfaction,  it  is  accordingly 
assumed,  that  Christ,  by  his  suffering  life  and  death, 
made  the  compensation  necessary,  and  prepared,  whether 
by  this  method,  or  by  that,  what  is  called  the  ground  of 
justification.  In  this  manner,  God  has  two  dispensa- 
tions, one  coming  after,  and  the  other  going  before,  and 
related  to  each  other  as  mercy  to  justice,  forgiveness  to 
punishment,  justification  to  condemnation.  Having 
begun  to  govern  by  mere  law,  enforced  by  rewards  and 
penalties,  and  by  that  having  failed  to  secure  his  pro- 
posed ends  of  character  and  eternal  felicity,  he  brings 
in  a  second  dispensation,  by  Christ,  to  rescue  the  guilty 
from  the  deserved  penalties  of  justice;  which  it  does, 
by  means  of  his  suffering  offered  as  a  satisfaction 
to  justice.  And  so  the  law,  it  is  conceived,  maintains 
its  integrity  still,  when  otherwise  it  would  be  quite 
broken  down,  or  even  virtually  given  up. 

Here  then  is  the  great  contested  matter  of  the  Chris- 


CHAP  III.  THE    ANTAGONISM,    ETC.  J[^    2$T  THE 

tian  salvation,  and  the  issue  made  up  at  ttns  ttoffit;  jfr  *"  " 
now  to  be  tried.     I  am  obliged  to  disallow  the  necessity 
of  any  such  penal  satisfaction,  or  indeed      No  com  eng& 
of  any  compensation  at  all  to  God's  jus-   tion   to  justice 
tice,  for  the  release  of  transgression ;  that  necdcd- 
is,  of  any  compensation  beyond  what  is  incidental  to 
the  vicarious  sacrifice  and  the  power  it  obtains  by  de- 
claring the  righteousness  of  God. 

As  regards  this  question,  two  kinds  of  answer  may 
be  given  that  are  quite  distinct  and  independent  of  each 
other ;  one  that  turns  upon  a  due  qualifi-  Two  modcs  of 
cation  of  the  antagonism  between  justice  argument. 
and  mercy — which  will  occupy  the  present  chapter; 
and  another  which  considers  specifically  the  several 
kinds  of  damage  that  are  supposed  to  follow,  when  sins 
are  forgiven  without  compensation — which  will  occupy 
the  next  three  chapters.  The  present  chapter  is  not 
necessary  to  my  general  argument,  but  is  a  kind  of 
interpolation,  and  is  introduced,  not  because  it  is  re- 
quired by  my  doctrine,  but  because  a  revision  of  our 
impressions  concerning  the  supposed  antagonism,  ap- 
pears to  be  due  to  the  general  subject,  and  even  to  the 
honors  of  divine  justice  itself. 

Undertaking  this  revision,  I  put  forward  two  points, 
where  we  seem  to  fall  into  misconceptions,  that  increase 
the  antagonism  between  justice  and  mercy,  and  make  it 
wider  and  more  complete  than  it  really  is. 

1.  Having  much  to  say  about  justice,  as  an  exact 
doing  upon  wrong  of  what  it  deserves,  we  begin  to  im- 
agine that  justice  goes  by  desert,  both  in  its  rules 


268     .  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PART  IIL 

and  measures,  and  thinks  of  nothing  else.     It  follows, 
of  course,  that  justice  lets  go  being  just,  exactly  as  it 

6   SCa^e  °^  Desert   ^   its  6X- 


Justice  in  the 

scaie  of  desert  ecuted  penalties.  We  have  many  scrip- 
e  '  tures  also  to  cite  for  authority  ;  as  when 
it  is  declared  that  God  will  "render  to  every  man  ac- 
cording to  his  deeds,"  "reward  every  man  according  to 
his  works;"  or  when  it  is  declared  that  every  man 
"shall  receive  the  things  done  in  the  body,"  having 
them  as  it  were  put  back  upon  him  for  his  punishment  ; 
or  when  the  lex  ialionis  itself  is  formally  appealed  to  as 
the  rule  of  God's  justice  —  "For  with  what  measure  ye 
meet  it  shall  be  measured  to  you  again."  All  these 
and  other  like  Scripture  expressions  are  taken  to  mean 
about  the  same  thing,  as  giving  back  to  wrong  just 
what  it  gives,  and  we  conceive  it  to  be  a  matter  a  great 
deal  more  definite  than  it  is,  to  say  that  justice  is  the 
making  of  a  transgressor  to  suffer  what  he  deserves. 

In  a  certain  popular  sense,  this  language  and  all  the 
scripture  citations  referred  to  are  good  —  nothing  could 
be  more  forcible  or  impressive  —  but,  when  we  ask  pre- 
cisely what  we  mean  by  it,  we  shall  be  more  at  a  loss 
than  we  expected.  Is  it  any  fit  conception  of  God's 
justice,  that  he  will  put  evil  upon  a  wrong-doer,  just 
because  he  is  bad  and  according  to  his  badness,  apart 
from  all  uses  to  the  man  himself,  or  to  others,  or  to  the 
government  he  violates?  Is  it  the  divine  justice  to  fly 
at  evil  doing  and  make  it  feel  just  as  much  evil  as  it 
practices?  Is  there  no  counsel  in  God's  justice,  no  con- 
sideration of  ends,  or  uses  ? 


CHAP.  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  269 

We  can  "hardly  be  satisfied,  I  think,  with  this.  In- 
deed we  could  not  approve  ourselves  in  putting  on  a 
wrong  doer  the  evil  he  deserves  to  suffer,  without  finding 
some  reason  for  it  besides  his  desert.  And  yet  we  could 
not  be  satisfied,  in  reducing  God's  justice  to  a  mere 
consideration  of  public  ends,  or  reasons  of  beneficence. 
We  feel  that  there  is,  and  ought  to  be  something  more 
fiery  and  fateful  in  his  justice  than  that.  What  then  is 
the  conception  that  meets  our  feeling,  and  what,  exactly, 
do  we  mean,  when  we  say  that  justice  and  desert  are 
ideas  that  go  thus  fitly  together  ? 

We  mean,  first  of  all,  that  there  is  a  deep  wrath- 
principle  in  God,  as  in  all  moral  natures,  that  puts  him 
down  upon  wrong,  and  girds  him  in  The  rath.prin. 
avenging  majesty  for  the  infliction  of  cipic  of  justice  no 
suffering  upon  wrong.  Just  as  we 
speak  of  our  felt  indignations,  and  tell  how  we  are  made 
to  burn  against  the  person,  or  even  the  life  of  the 
wrong  doer,  so  God  has  his  heavier  indignations,  and 
burns  with  his  more  consuming  fire.  But  this  combus- 
tion of  right  anger,  this  wrath-impulse  so  fearfully 
moved,  is  no  law  to  God  certainly,  requiring  him  to  ex- 
ecute just  what  will  exhaust  the  passion.  It  is  only 
that  girding  power  of  justice  that  puts  him  on  the  work 
of  redress,  and  that  armature  of  strength  upon  his  feel- 
ing, that  enables  him  to  inflict  pain  "without  shrinking. 
And  then,  at  just  this  point,  comes  in  another  func- 
tion, equally  necessary ;  viz.,  wisdom,  counsel,adminis- 
trative  reason,  which  directs  the  aim,  tempers  the 
degree,  and  regulates  the  measures  and  times,  of  the 

23* 


270  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PART  III. 

pain.  Thus  it  is  that  we  ourselves  dispense  and  grad- 
uate justice;  and  then,  standing  at  the  hither  point  of 
our  vindicative  passion,  we  say  that  we  have  done 
upon  the  wrong  doer  just  what  he  deserves.  Standing, 
farther  off,  at  the  point  of  counsel,  and  considering  how 
we  have  graduated  the  measure  of  his  punishment,  we 
should  say,  that  we  have  done  upon  him,  only  what 
the  welfare  of  society,  and  the  due  sanctification  of 
law  requires. 

There  is,  then,  no  such  thing  in  God,  or  any  other 
b^ing,  as  a  kind  of  justice  which  goes  by  the  law  of 
desert,  and  ceases  to  be  justice  when  ill  desert  is  not, 
exactly  matched  by  suffering.  God's  ends,  and  objects, 
and  public  reasons,  have  as  much  to  do  with  his  justice 
as  the  wrath-principle  has,  which  arms  and  impels  his 
justice.  It  is  no  breach  of  justice  therefore,  and  no 
real  fault  of  proceeding,  that  God  tempers  justice  by 
mercy,  and  mercy  by  justice,  whenever  he  can  most 
advance  the  solid  interests  of  character  and  society  by 
so  doing.  There  is  no  principle  which  any  human 
being  can  state,  or  even  think,  that  obliges  him,  on 
pain  of  losing  character,  to  do  by  the  disobedient  ex- 
actly as  they  deserve.  The  rule,  taken  as  a  measure, 
has  no  moral  signification.  God  therefore  need  not  give 
Himself  up  to  wrath,  in  order  to  be  just;  he  can  have 
the  right  of  counsel  still.  Perfect  liberty  is  left  him  to 
do  by  the  wrong  doer  better  than  he  deserves,  and 
yet  without  any  fault  of  justice — better  that  is,  consid- 
ering his  own  condemning  judgment  of  him,  and  the 
man's  condemning  judgment  of  himself,  than  he  might 


CHAP.  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  271 

well  do,  or  even  ought  to  do,  if  the  sublime  interests 
of  his  government  should  require. 

2.  It  is  another  misconception,  just  now  stated  in  the 
introduction  of  this  chapter,  that  we  assume  the  essen- 
tial priority  of  law  and  justice,  as  re- 

Another  miscon- 

lated  to  mercy ;  as  if  it  were  another  ception  as  respects 
dispensation  having  a  right,  in  its  own  the  priority  of  jus- 
precedence,  to  be  undisturbed  and  qual- 
ified by  no  different  kind  of  proceeding.  "Was  not 
every  thing  put  upon  the  footing  of  law,  and  since  we 
have  broken  through  the  law,  how  can  God  bring  us  into 
justification  without  overturning  the  law  Himself? 
Will  He  mock  his  law,  because  we  have  mocked  it? 
and  will  he  give  it  up,  because  wer  have  turned  away 
from  it?  What  remains  then  for  Him,  but  to  do  justice 
upon  us?  How  can  he  justify,  in  this  view,  unless 
there  be  some  satisfaction,  or  compensation  of  justice 
provided? 

There  does  not  after  all  appear  to  be  any  solid  merit 
in  this  kind  of  argument.  It  matters  not  whether  we 
say  that  we  have  two  dispensations,  or  Justiceandmercy 
one;  in  some  sense  we  have  two,  viz.,  co-ordinate  and  co- 
justice  and  mercy;  but  it  does  not  ap- 
pear that  there  is  any  priority  of  time  in  one  as  related 
to  the  other,  or  that  both  are  not  introduced  to  work 
together  for  one  common  result.  Then,  whether  we 
understand  the  mythic  tree,  or  test-tree  of  the  garden, 
to  be  the  law  before  government,  or  to  be  some  institu- 
ted precept  in  which  it  is  presented  more  specifically, 
the  sin  of  the  sin  is,  in  either  case,  the  casting  off  of 


272  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PART  III. 

the  former ;  that  which  carries  with  it  a  revolution  of 
character  down  to  its  deepest  principle.  And  the 
"death"  that  followed  was  the  moral  dying  that  must 
come  with  such  a  revolution — no  death  of  God's  inflic- 
tion, but  a  declarative  death,  connected  with  the  fall 
out  of  principle.  Then  follows  what  is  called  the  prom- 
ise, and  what  is  called  the  curse — the  promise  first  and 
the  curse  afterward — that  as  the  new  hope,  this  as  the 
new  state  of  wrath  and  penal  discipline.  And  both 
together,  having  one  and  the  same  general  aim,  are 
inaugurated,  as  the  right  and  left  hand,  so  to  speak,  of 
God's  instituted  government.  They  are  to  have  a  prop- 
erly joint  action;  one  to  work  by  enforcement,  and  the 
other  by  attraction,  or  moral  inspiration ;  both  having 
it  as  their  end  or  office,  to  restore  and  establish  the 
everlasting,  impersonal  law.  God  never  expected  and 
never  undertook,  calling  that  his  government,  to  bring 
his  subjects  on  and  consummate  his  purposes  regarding 
them,  by  statutes  and  penalties  of  justice.  It  might  as 
well  be  imagined  that  he  undertook  to  govern  his 
heavens  by  the  centrifugal  force,  and  added  the  centrip- 
etal afterward,  to  bring  the  flying  bodies  back. 

There  is  a  certain  antagonism,  it  is  true,  in  the  modes 
of  action  observed  by  the  law-power  of  God's  statutes 
and  the  justifying  power  of  Christ;  even  as  there  is 
between  the  two  great  forces  of  nature  just  referred  to. 
But  the  antagonism  is  formal,  not  real;  partial,  not 
absolute.  They  are  to  be  co-factors  in  the  operation 
of  a  government  that  undertakes,  for  its  object,  the 
reconciliation  of  fallen  men  to  God — a  state  of  beatific 


CHAP  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  273 

worship  and  complete  society.  And  to  this  end  one  is 
set  to  enforce  obligation,  stir  the  conscience,  intimidate 
and  set  back  the  impetuosity  of  sin,  so  to  waken  right 
conviction  and  prepare  a  felt  necessity  of  the  other; 
and  then  the  sensibility  taken  hold  of  and  impressed, 
softened  and  melted,  in  one  word  drawn  by  that  other, 
is  to  win  a  choice,  raise  that  choice  into  a  love,  in  that 
love  become  a  new  revelation,  so  a  salvation.  And  so 
much  is  there  in  this  twofold  action  that  without  some 
such  grip  of  law  and  justice  on  the  soul,  no  grace- 
power  of  God  could  ever  win  it  back ;  and  without  the 
grace-power  felt  in  its  blessed  attractions,  no  mere  law- 
and-justice  power  could  beget  any  thing  closer  to  God 
than  a  compelled  obedience,  or  fear  that  hath  torment. 
There  was  in  fact  an  antecedent  necessity  of  their  con- 
joined working,  that,  in  the  due  qualifying  of  each 
other,  they  may  complement  what  would  otherwise  be 
a,  fault  in  each. 

Thus  by  the  retributive  principle  running  through 
all  our  natural  and  Providential  experience,  the  self- 
sacrificing,  vicarious,  love-principle  is  IIow  the  two  co. 
so  tempered  as  to  make  our  time  of  operate  in  redemp- 
grace  a  thoroughly  rugged  and  stern 
holiday ;  while  by  the  love-principle,  gently  interfused, 
all  the  retributions  of  our  experience  are  held  back  and. 
qualified,  to  be  only  fomentations  of  thoughtfulness 
and  holy  conviction.  Indeed  we  may  go  farther  and 
have  it  as  a  fact  discovered,  that  these  partially  contest- 
ing agencies  only  press  us  yet  more  effectively,  because 
they  seem  to  be  in  a  race  for  us  with  each  other.  The 


274  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PART  III. 

retributive  principle  is  propagating  disorder,  misrule, 
blindness,  obduracy  of  feeling  in  our  sin,  closing  up,  as 
it  were,  the  gates  of  receptivity ;  so  that  shortly  nothing 
shall  be  left  for  love  and  sacrifice  to  work  upon — at 
which  point,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  justice  gets  entire 
possession  of  us  and  has  our  everlasting  future  to  itself. 
Or  reversing  the  example,  the  mercy-principle  in 
Christ's  sacrifice  gets  advantage  of  the  retributive,  win- 
ning the  soul  to  itself  and  begetting  it  anew  in  God's 
liberty — when  of  course  the  justice-claim  falls  off  to  be 
a  claim  gone  by  forever.  In  this  manner  they  both 
work  together,  striving,  as  it  were,  to  outstrip  each 
other,  and  exert,  in  that  way,  only  the  more  stringent 
motive  pressure  on  the  life  and  character.  Let  no  one 
then  imagine  that  they  are  in  a  state  of  real  contrariety, 
because  they  are  so  far  antagonistic  in  their  action. 
The  celestial  analogies  already  referred  to  show  that 
order  and  static  equilibrium  are,  in  fact,  the  result- 
ant of  contending  forces.  Were  either  one  of  these  to 
stop  its  endeavor,  the  condition  of  wreck  would  be 
forthcoming  speedily.  And  just  so  nature,  all  through, 
is  packed  with  analogies  that  correspond.  Heat  and 
cold,  light  and  darkness,  land  and  sea,  central  fires  and 
weights  of  rock  above,  are  all  doing  battle  round  us  in 
the  same  way,  and  the  result  is  an  accruing  order  and 
stability  that  represents  eternal  beneficence. 

How  far  then  is  it  conceived  by  God,  in  the  appoint- 
ments of  justice  and  mercy,  that  they  really  infringe 
upon  each  other ;  how  far  that  the  rugged  and  rough 
power  of  justice  is  like  to  be  injured  and  borne  down 


CIIAP.  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  275 

by  its  tender  competitor,  enough  to  want  some  com- 
pensation for  its  injuries?  The  real  fact  is,  that  God's 
instituted  law  really  commands  through  love  and  sacri- 
fice; for  no  created  mind  could  possibly  be  thrust 
straight  through  into  good,  by  penal  enforcements  and 
motivities.  It  never  is  in  good,  till  it  has  cast  out  fear 
and  gone  forever  clear  of  it,  to  love  the  right,  or  the 
holy,  for  its  own  sake.  Law  has  nothing  to  do  with 
such  a  result  save  initially.  It  even  supposes  a  capti- 
vating power  working  with  it,  to  bring  out  the  result, 
and  consummate  the  love  in  which  the  law's  intentions 
are  fulfilled. 

Or  suppose  that  in  the  race  of  contestation  just  now 
described,  it  should  happen,  as  one  or  the  other  get4? 
exclusive  and  final  dominion  of  the  soul,  that  the 
excluded  party  suffers  a  real  infringement.  Then,  by 
the  supposition,  justice  may  have  taken  away  the 
chances  and  infringed  the  rights  of  mercy,  as  truly  as 
mercy  can  have  violated  the  rights  of  justice ;  when  if 
compensations  are  to  be  made,  the  mercy-impulse  of 
God's  feeling  has  as  good  a  right  to  compensation  from 
his  justice,  as  that  from  his  mercy.  For  his  mercy  is 
as  old  as  his  justice,  and  began  as  soon,  and  is  a  char- 
acter certainly  not  less  dear  or  sacred.  Justice,  too,  may 
as  fitly  groan  for  the  pacification  of  mercy,  as  mercy 
for  the  pacification  of  justice. 

On  this  point  of  infringement  and  rightful  compensa- 
tion, I  have  looked  intently  for  some  declaration  of 
Scripture,  and  am  only  surprised  that  I  do  not  find  what 


276  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PART  III. 

I  should  have  expected  to  meet  in  many  examples ;  for 

nothing  is  plainer  than  the  distinctness  of  manner  and 

,  .      office,  in  what  are  called  justice  and 

How  the   Scrip- 
tures hold  this  an-  mercy.    One  acts  retributively,  the  other 

compassionately ;  one  by  laws  of  natural 
consequence,  the  other  by  supernatural  intervention; 
one  goes  by  desert,  the  other  by  self-sacrifice  trans- 
cending desert;  one  condemns  just  where  the  other  un- 
dertakes to  even  justify ;  so  that,  factors  though  they 
be  in  forwarding  a  common  result,  we  should  not  be 
surprised  to  find  them  set  against  each  other  in  Scrip- 
ture terms,  and  described  as  reconcilable,  only  in  the 
fact  that  one  pays  tribute  to  the  other.  Still  I  know 
not  where  it  is  done.  God  nowhere  signifies  that  he 
has  given  up  the  world  to  the  prior  right  of  justice,  and 
that  mercy  shall  come  in,  only  as  she  pays  a  gate-fee 
for  the  right  of  entrance.*  A  reference  is  frequently 
made  to  two  passages  of  Scripture  as  implying  one  of 
them,  and  the  other  affirming,  a  repugnance  between 
justice  and  mercy,  which  only  God's  wisdom  in  his 
Son  can  sufficiently  reconcile.  Thus,  when  it  is  de- 

*  This  complete  silence  of  the  Scripture,  concerning  a  compensation, 
or  necessary  satisfaction  paid  to  justice,  has  probably  been  noticed  by 
many.  I  have  only  fallen  upon  a  single  instance,  in  the  Lectures  of 
Mr.  Veysie.  Admitting  the  commonly  received  Scripture  ideas  of  re- 
conciliation and  propitiation,  he  considers  all  that  is  said  of  satisfaction, 
as  their  necessary  ground,  to  be  originated  wholly  by  the  speculations 
or  constructive  theories,  of  men;  and  he  says — "  Now  the  sacred  writers 
nowhere,  as  far  as  I  know,  expressly  assert  any  satisfaction  at  all  as 
having  been  effected  by  the  death  of  Christ.. —  Veysie 's  Bampton  Lec- 
tures.— Z 


CHAP.  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  277 

dared,  in  sovereign  promise,  that  "mercy  and  truth, 
are  met  together,  righteousness  and  peace  have  kissed 
each  other,"*  the  supposition  is  that  by  some  wondrous 
compensative  grace  of  God,  as  in  Christ,  these  incom- 
patibles  are  made  to  coalesce.  "Whereas  nothing  is 
meant,  as  will  be  seen  by  a  reference  to  the  Psalm  itself  j 
but  that  in  the  public  restoration  promised,  goodness 
and  fidelity,  and  right  and  concord,  shall  return  as  a 
benignant  constellation  of  graces,  to  bless  and  adorn  the 
new  society.  Again  it  is  repeated,  how  often,  that 
"mercy  rejoiceth  against  judgment  ;"f  as  if  that  were 
even  the  key  principle  of  the  gospel  plan.  It  very 
well  might  be,  only  taking  the  two  to  be  merely  as 
distinct  in  their  action,  as  was  just  now  represented. 
But  then  it  would  be  just  as  true,  that  judgment  re- 
joiceth against  mercy.  The  passage  however  has 
nothing  to  do  with  either  of  these  two  modes  of  con- 
trariety. By  the  "  mercy  "  it  means  simply  the  man  who 
does  mercy,  and  that  he  rejoiceth  against  judgment,  or 
over  it,  in  the  sense  that  his  heart  is  too  strong,  his  con- 
fidence too  immovable,  to  be  shaken  by  any  sort  of 
condemnation — "he  shall  have  judgment  without 
mercy,  that  hath  showed  no  mercy,  and  mercy  [when  it 
is  faithfully  done]  rejoiceth  against  judgment."  "  Bold- 
ness in  the  day  of  judgment "  is  a  promise  of  the  same 
thing. 

It  would  be  difficult,  on  the  other  hand,  to  represent 
all  the  figures  of  community  and  close  conjunction  held 
by  these  words  in  the  Scripture.  Sometimes  it  is  con- 

*Ps.  Ixxxv.  10.  fJas.  ii.  13. 

24 


278  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PART  IIL 

ceived  that  God's  mercy  has  its  opportunity  in  his  jus- 
tice, and  not  any  obstacle  at  all.  Even  as  the  great 
Hebrew  poet,  conscious  of  no  dereliction  from  or- 
thodoxy, testifes,  "  Also  unto  thee,  0  Lord,  belongeth 
mercy ;  for  thou  renderest  to  every  man  according  to 
his  work."*  Sometimes  the  two  co-factors  are  strung 
together,  as  pearls  that  are  alike,  on  the  same  string — 
"I  am  the  Lord  which  exercise  loving  kindness,  judg- 
ment, and  righteousness  in  the  earth  ;"f  "  The  weight- 
ier matters  of  the  law,  judgment,  mercy  and  faith;":); 
"Knowing  therefore  the  goodness  and  severity  of 
God."§  They  sometimes,  even  cross  over  into  the 
province  one  of  the  other,  and  change  offices ;  "  the 
terror  of  the  Lord  persuades,"!  even  as  "the  cross 
lifted  up  draws ;"T  an^  "the  law  slays"**  even  as 
Christ  rejected  "reproves  of  sin. "ft  Again  they  both 
alike  support  the  appeal  of  warning — "  behold  the  judge 
standeth  at  the  door!"JJ  "behold  the  bridegroom 
cometh!"§§  The  rule  of  judgment  is  also  declared  to 
be  the  same  in  both,  according  to  even  the  same  chap- 
ter— "  For  as  many  as  have  sinned  in  the  law  shall  be 
judged  by  the  law;"||||  "In  the  day  when  God  shall 
judge  the  secrets  of  men  by  Jesus  Christ,  according 
to  my  gospel."TfT  The  judge,  too,  is  to  be  at  once  the 
eternal  Lawgiver  and,  in  some  equally  true  sense,  to  be 
Christ  himself.  "Shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth 

*  Pa.  Ixii.  12.  f  Jer.  ix.  24.  $  Math,  xxiii.  23.  §  Rom.  xi.  22. 
1 2.  Cor.  v.  11.  If  John  xii.  32.  **  Rom.  vii.  11.  ff  John  xvL  8. 
ft  Jas.  v.  9.  §§  Math.  xxv.  6.  \\  Rom.  ii.  12.  ^  Rom  ii.  16. 


CHAP.  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  279 

do  right?"*  "Hath   given  him   authority  also  to  ex- 
ecute judgment  because  he  is  the  Son  of  man."f 

We  shall  find  also,  both  in  the  old  Testament  and  the 
New,  declarations  made  of  God  and  of  his  Son  that 
represent  both  in  the  same  general  com-  The  w  and  ^^ 
bination  of  attribute ;  asserting  them-  dispensations,  how 
selves,  at  once,  both  in  all  the  rigors  related* 
of  justice,  and  all  the  tender  concern  of  a  forgiving 
sacrifice  and  sympathy.  Thus  we  have  from  the  Old — 
11  The  Lord,  the  Lord  God,  merciful  and  gracious,  long 
suffering  and  abundant  in  goodness  and  truth,  keeping 
rnercy  for  thousands,  forgiving  iniquity,  transgression, 
and  sin,  and  that  will  by  no  means  clear  the  guilty, 
[that  is  the  incorrigible.]^:  And  again,  answering  ex- 
actly to  this  we  have  from  the  New — "  Tribulation  and 
anguish  upon  every  soul  of  man  that  doeth  evil,  [con- 
tinueth  incorrigible  in  it]  of  the  Jew  first,  and  also  of 
the  Gentile.  But  glory,  honor,  and  peace,  to  every 
man  that  worketh  good,  to  the  Jew  first  and  also  to  the 
Gentile."§  And  what  have  we,  in  fact,  but  a  complete 
Bumming  up  of  all  such  combinations  in  these  two 
words— "the  wrath  of  the  Lamb?" 

Does  any  one  ask  what,  in  this  view,  becomes  of  the 
superior  grace,  or  graciousness  of  the  New  Testament? 
I  see  no  room  for  a  superior  grace,  that  requires  a  supe- 
rior and  better  kind  of  God.  The  two  dispensations  are 
not  two,  in  the  sense  of  being  opposite,  but  only  in  the 
sense  of  being  one  of  them  more  full  and  complete  than 
the  other  at  once  could  be.  The  New  Testament  is  only 

*  Gen.  xviii.  25.     f  John  v.  27.      %  Ex.  xxxiv.  6-7.      §  Rom,  ii.  9. 


280  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PART  III 

a  new  edition  of  the  Old,  greatly  enlarged  and  improved 
— yet  still  accordant  faithfully  in  its  radical  import. 
They  both  declare  the  same  God,  only  in  different  stages 
of  human  thought  or  development;  neither  of  them 
could  be  true,  if  they  gave  us  different  kinds  of  God,  or 
of  government.  Still  though  God  is  just  in  both,  and 
merciful  in  both,  the  former  was  likely  to  be  taken  more 
legally  and  felt  more  as  a  bondage,  because  it  was  a  drill 
of  outward  rites  and  observances ;  and  the  latter  to  be 
taken  even  as  a  deliverance  from  that  bondage,  because 
of  the  incarnate  person  who  could  fitly  represent  to  men's 
feeling  the  dear  charities  of  God,  and  show  the  rites  ful- 
filling their  idea  in  his  own  complete  and  all  sufficient  sac- 
rifice. No  one  was  obliged  to  stay  fast  in  the  legalities 
of  the  old  religion ;  multitudes  of  the  glorious  fathers 
and  prophet  teachers  and  little  ones  of  faith  did  not ; 
they  broke  through  into  the  faith- world,  as  God  was 
helping  them  to  do,  even  by  means  of  their  rites ;  but 
in  general  they  stuck  fast  in  the  letter,  and  the  letter 
was  death.  The  new  ministration  therefore  in  the  in- 
carnate person  was  life  in  comparison,  a  ministration 
of  righteousness  that  doth  exceed  in  glory. 

But  while  the  offices  of  justice  and  mercy  are  so 
plainly  in  a  close  relationship,  and  are  brought  along 

God  dispenses  so  cordiallJ  together  in  the  Scripture,  in- 
justice in  a  right  tertwining  both  as  forces  of  good  in  the 
government  and  governmental  character 
of  God,  I  most  freely  admit  the  necessity  that  God's 
justice  should  be  maintained  in  the  highest  possible 


CHAP.  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  281 

degree  of  emphasis.  It  is  necessary  to  God's  admin- 
istrative character.  As  regards  that  character,  he  can 
as  well  be  perfect  in  a  shortened  benevolence,  as  in  a 
restricted  and  diminished  justice.  Or  if  we  look  only 
at  the  defenses  of  law,  and  the  motivities  at  work  for 
the  regaining  of  souls,  it  is  a  matter  of  the  highest 
necessity,  that  there  should  be  no  appearance  of  slack- 
ness in  God,  and  that  his  justice  should  be  kept  fast  in 
the  loftiest,  most  sovereign  pitch  of  firmness  possible. 
And  what  is  this?  Is  it  the  truest  firmness  of  justice 
that  it  is  itself  fast  bound  by  the  letter,  having  no 
liberty  but  to  exact  precisely  the  pound  of  flesh,  suf- 
fering no  reduction?  Is  the  weight  of  God's  justice 
heaviest,  when  it  is  according  to  some  formally  exact 
standard  of  measurement  conceived  for  it  by  theologic 
opinion — a  standard  it  must  meet,  in  order  to  be  itself 
justified?  Must  He  be  a  precisionist  in  order  to  be 
passed  as  just?  On  the  contrary  he  seems  to  me  to  be 
most  grandly  just,  when  he  holds  his  firmness  in  a 
certain  way  of  liberty — most  grandly  merciful  too, 
when  he  dispenses  mercy,  as  one  taking  counsel  of 
justice.  lie  should  seem,  in  his  justice,  to  say  that  he 
will  suffer  no  jot  or  tittle  of  the  law  to  fail;  and  then 
to  make  the  saying  still  more  certainly  good,  he  should, 
for  the  law's  sake,  add  such  argument  of  love  and 
mercy,  as  will  restore  both  jot  and  tittle  and,  if  pos- 
sible, the  whole  broken  body  of  the  law.  Nothing 
goes  highest  in  God's  attributes,  when  it  loses  out  the 
chance  of  liberty  and  discretionary  counsel.  Not  even 
the  righteousness  of  God  will  be  fitly  expressed,  when 


282  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PABT  III. 

his  eternal  liberty,  in  the  principle,  is  hampered  by  the 
letter,  in  his  penal  enforcements. 

We  shall  conceive    this  subject  most  worthily,    I 

think,  if  we  revert  a  moment  to  first  principles  in  the 

Jnstice  dispensed  universal  order.     Saying  nothing  here 

by  natural  law.  of  justice,  as  regarding  its  necessities, 
or  ends,  or  the  vindicatory  character,  or  the  vindicatory 
function  it  discharges  in  the  matter  of  government,  let 
us  look  directly  at  the  single  point  of  executive  certainty 
and  firmness,  in  the  way  of  dispensing  justice.  And 
here  we  shall  very  soon  convince  ourselves,  it  appears  to 
me,  that  God  has  not  undertaken  to  dispense  justice  by 
direct  infliction,  but  by  a  law  of  natural  consequence. 
He  has  connected  thus,  with  our  moral  and  physical 
nature,  a  law  of  reaction,  by  which  any  wrong  of 
thought,  feeling,  disposition,  or  act,  provokes  a  retribu- 
tion exactly  fitted  to  it  and,  with  qualifications  already 
given,  to  the  desert  of  it.  And  this  law  is  just  like 
every  law  of  natural  order  inviolable,  not  subject  to 
suspension,  or  discontinuance,  even  by  miracle  itself. 
And  justice  is,  in  this  view,  a 'fixed  principle  of  order, 
as  truly  as  the  laws  of  the  heavenly  bodies. 

This,  too,  seems  to  be  the  prevailing  representation  of 
the  Scriptures;  as  when  they  testify  that  " the  wages 
of  sin  is  death ;"  "  that  whatever  a  man  soweth,  that 
shall  he  also  reap ;"  that  the  rust  of  gold  and  silver, 
cankered  in  the  hoards  of  covetousness,  "shall  eat  the 
flesh  as  it  were  fire;"  that  by  the  law  of  the  judgment 
itself,  we  "  shall  receive  the  things  done  in  the  body  " — 
having  them  come  back  as  tormentors;  that  talents 


CHAP.  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  283 

improved  shall  be  doubled,  and  talents  misimproved 
"taken  away;"  that  wickedness  shall  "go  to  its  own 
place;"  "go  away;"  "depart;"  passing  off  henceforth 
to  be  with  itself,  and  be  "  filled  with  its  own  devices." 
A  good  many  declarations  of  Scripture  appear  to  speak 
of  something  more  nearly  inflictive ;  but  it  is  better  to 
conceive,  in  such  cases,  that  the  language  is  declarative 
only  of  what  is  coming  to  pass,  by  the  fixed  laws  and 
causes  of  natural  retribution, — which  laws  and  causes 
have  a  self-propagating  action  without  limit;  for  no 
disorder  can  issue  itself  in  order. 

And  yet,  as  we  have  been  saying,  these  same  or- 
dinances of  justice  are  to  go  along  with  mercy  and  in 
some  possible  way  of  conjunction  are  to  The  nfttural  lftw 
work  out,  with  her,  even  redemption  of  justice  never  in- 
itself.  But  how  is  this?  where  is  the  fringed by mercy' 
possibility  of  this,  without  even  a  subverting,  by  mercy, 
of  the  retributive  laws  just  described?  Do  I  then  sub- 
vert the  law  of  gravity,  when  I  lift  a  weight  from  the 
ground?  or  by  kindling  a  fire,  cause  the  smoke  to 
ascend  in  spite  of  gravity?  Or,  when  I  forbid  the 
simples  of  gunpowder  to  unite  in  the  touch  of  fire,  by 
throwing  a  water-bath  on  them,  do  I  therefore  over- 
throw, because  I  so  decisively  dominate  in,  the  chemi- 
cal affinities  concerned  ?  Were  not  all  these  laws  and 
affinities  intended  to  be  just  so  far  submitted  to  my  will  ? 
If  then,  by  my  will,  acting  in  among  them,  they  are 
brought  to  act  in  serviceable  ways,  as  they  otherwise 
would  not,  or  not  to  act  at  all,  is  their  nature  therefore 
violated,  or  their  law  discontinued  ?* 

*  Vide,  Nature  and  the  Supernatural,  p.  58,  §§. 


284  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PART  III. 

No  more  are  the  ordinances  of  justice  overturned, 

when  mercy  comes  to  them  and  blends  her  action  with 

theirs.     The  executive  laws  of  -justice 

Mercy   only    m-  J 

teracts  supematu-   are  natural ;  the  person  of  Christ,  his 

rally  with  justice.       characterj   ^    the    mQral   pQwer   he    ob. 

tains  in  human  feeling  by  his  action,  his  beautiful  life, 
his  death  of  sacrifice,  is  supernatural.  This  kind  of 
power  too,  working  in  men's  hearts  and  dispositions, 
any  one  can  see  does  not  stop  the  causative  forces  of 
retribution  working  in  the  same.  It  only  works  in 
with  them,  as  a  qualifying  agency.  The  same  of  course 
will  be  true,  when  the  Holy  Spirit  takes  the  things  of 
Christ — the  same  things — and,  showing  them  inwardly, 
brings  them  into  such  highest  power  as  they  may  ex- 
ercise. Accordingly,  when  the  mercy  of  the  sacrifice, 
working  in  thus  with  and  among  the  retributive  causes 
of  justice,  issues  a  result  which  neither  she  nor  they 
could  issue  alone,  it  no  more  follows  that  the  order  of 
justice  is  violated,  than  that  nature's  law  of  gravity,  or 
chemical  affinity  is  violated,  in  the  examples  just  given. 
Still  the  justice-law  goes  on,  doing  exactly  what  was 
given  it  to  do,  only  so  far  co- working  or  working  in 
with  mercy,  as  it  was  originally  meant  to  do.  Even  as 
Christ  came  to  nature  in  miracle,  as  a  higher  first  term, 
doing  all  his  mighty  works  without  stopping,  or  sus- 
pending any  law,*  so,  much  more  easily  may  it  be  true, 
that  his  new  creating  and  delivering  work  of  mercy, 
operating  only  as  by  moral  power,  falls  in  conjunctively 
among  the  retributive  causes  of  nature,  and  without 

*  Nature  and  the  Supernatural,  Chapter  IX. 


CHAP.  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  285 

any  discontinuance  turns  them  to  a  serviceable  office, 
in  accomplishing  its  own  great  designs.  Still  they  work 
on,  subject  tq  the  fixed  law  of  justice,  which  is  neither 
subverted  nor  suspended,  and  never  will  be.  It  even 
assists  the  conversion  of  men,  by  acting  strictly  in 
character,  as  a  condemning  and  slaying  power. 

Let  us  turn  our  thoughts  then,  for  a  moment,  upon 
the  relative  working  of  these  two  forces,  so  generally 
considered  to  be  wholly  contrary  and  In  their  relative 
mutually  destructive  of  each  other,  and  working  they  mag- 
see  how  they  both  get  honor  and  sub-  nify  each  other< 
limity  together,  when  God  has  his  liberty  in  them  and 
wields  them  as  in  counsel ;  for  he  does  it  in  a  way  to 
confirm  and  magnify  both,  never  to  diminish  or  weaken 
either.  Thus,  when  we  go  out  into  life,  the  retributive 
causes  of  nature  roll  out  their  heavy  caisson  with  us, 
and  drag  it  down  the  road,  making  no  stop,  and  turning 
never  aside  more  than  do  the  stars ;  and  mercy  comes 
out  also  in  her  soft  gait  and  tender  look  of  sorrow  to 
go  with  us,  in  like  faithful  company.  She  looks  upon 
the  dread  machine,  goes  before  it,  goes  behind  it,  blesses 
nature's  inflexible  order  in  it;  only  putting  on  the 
soul  itself  her  secret,  supernatural  touch,  and  the 
soft  inward  baptism  of  her  feeling — even  that  which 
she  has  unfolded  so  powerfully  in  the  facts  of  the  cross 
— and  dewing  it  thus  with  her  tender  mitigations, 
keeps  it  in  the  possibility  of  good ;  while  the  retribu- 
tive causes  go  their  way,  and  do  their  work,  not  arrest- 
ed in  their  action,  but  only  qualified  resultantly,  by 


286  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PART  IIL 

the  different  kind  of  action  blended  with  them.  Finally 
the  subject,  quailing  often,  as  in  guilty  dread,  under  the 
condemning  justice,  and  drawn  by  the  softening  minis- 
trations of  mercy,  comes  to  that  final  crisis,  where  he  is 
cither  born,  or  never  to  be  born  of  God. 

If  it  be  the  first,  then,  as  he  is  born  of  God — partly 

by  the  quickening  power  of  mercy,  and  partly  by  the 

Conversion  by      slaying  power  of  j ustice — the  retributive 

their  joint  action.  causes  begin  to  have  a  kind  of  action 
qualified  by  the  now  sovereign  action  of  mercy.  In- 
stead of  bearing  every  thing  along  in  their  own  way, 
they  consent,  as  it  were,  to  roll  under,  giving  now  their 
much  needed  help  to  the  dear  co-factor  whose  triumph 
they  have  helped  already,  by  continuing  on,  to  do  as  in 
discipline,  what  before  they  were  doing  as  in  penal  en- 
forcement, and  thundering  as  sublimely  still  below  the 
horizon,  as  then  they  did  above.  The  new  born  disci- 
ple is  imperfect,  and  they  now  fall  in  to  have  a  chas- 
tening agency,  for  the  correcting  of  such  imperfections. 
And  how  dreadful,  in  severity  sometimes,  are  these 
after-storms  of  discipline,  that  cross  the  track  of  the 
justified.  It  is  even  as  if  some  mighty  Nimrod,  hunt- 
ing in  the  shepherd's  field,  were  setting  his  fierce  dogs 
upon  the  straying  ones,  to  chase  them  back  to  his  fold. 
Another  stage  arrives.  Made  ready  for  the  change, 
they  die  and  so  at  last  go  clear  both  of  penalty  and 
Salvation  discipline  together;  only  with  such  a 

glorifies  justice.  sensej  made  fast  in  them,  of  the  eminent 
majesty  and  immovable  worth  and  truth  of  God's  jus- 
tice, that  they  would  even  feel  it  less  profoundly,  under 


CHAP.!!!  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  287 

the  distracting  smart  of  its  eternal  pains  themselves. 
They  go  home  thus  to  God,  to  hide  as  lovingly  in  the 
bosom  of  his  justice,  as  is  any  other  of  His  tenderest 
attributes.  And  then  how  much  forever  does  it  mean, 
to  chant  the  honors  of  justice — "even  so,  Lord  God 
Almighty,  just  and  true  are  thy  judgments." 

Go  back  now  to  the  point  of  crisis  and  conceive  it  to 
be  turned  the  other  way, — that  the  transgressor  growing 
penally  hardened  under  the  retributive  judgment  vin- 
causes  of  his  nature,  pushes  finally  bye  dicates  mercy> 
his  day  of  rescue.  Still  the  mercy  clings  to  him,  whis- 
pering still  its  "  come,"  to  mitigate  the  natural  hardness 
and  bitterness  of  his  now  incorrigible  transgression. 
In  due  time  comes  the  last  change  also  here.  Christ, 
who  was  the  Saviqur,  is  now  the  Judge,  and  he  makes 
not  the  law  simply,  but  the  very  principle  of  his  cross 
and  sacrifice  too  the  standard  of  his  judgment  sentence. 
Every  thing  is  included  in  this — "  Ye  did  it  not  to  me ;" 
did  it  not,  that  is,  in  doing  acts  of  mercy  to  "  the  least 
of  these"  little  ones  of  their  Master.  And  so  the  jus- 
tice, working  in  God's  causes,  becomes  itself  the  lictor 
and  everlasting  vindicator  of  mercy — not  of  legal  stat- 
utes only,  but  of  all  Christly  possibility  and  example ; 
piling  on  additions  of  penalty,  as  much  more  severe,  as 
the  ill  desert  of  wrong  is  now  become  more  aggravated 
and  appalling.  Not  that  justice  now  has  forever  extir- 
pated mercy  by  its  judicial  ascendancy.  Bather  is  it 
become  the  body  guard  of  mercy  forever — fencing  not 
away  any  soul  from  it  that  will  come  to  it  for  life,  but 
maintaining  the  inviolable  order  of  that  pure  society  it 


288  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PART  III. 

has  undertaken  to  gather.  Mercy  will  never  be  dead 
though  it  may  be  finally  displaced ;  for  mercy  is  a  part 
of  God,  and  God  will  never  be  thought  as  having  let 
the  cup  dry  up  in  his  bosom,  to  indulge  himself  only 
in  the  wrathful  severities  of  justice.  Still  God  is  love- 
always  to  be  love — only  the  retributions  of  justice  will 
be  now  so  branded  in,  that  no  one  turns  himself  to  the 
love ;  holding  still  fast  the  "  congenial  horrors  "  that  are 
so  firmly  fastened  upon  him,  by  his  everlastingly  per- 
sistent choices. 

Now  if  any  one  imagines  that  God's  eternal  justice 
will  be  more  effectually  magnified,  by  running  its  career 
of  penalty  straight  through,  punishing  the  jot  and  tittle 
of  wrong,  by  the  jot  and  tittle  of  penalty,  and  even 
exacting  the  jot  and  tittle  of  satisfaction,  before  it  can 
suffer  forgiveness  itself  to  forgive ;  I  confess  it  does  not 
so  appear  to  me.  I  see  no  honor  accruing  to  God's  jus- 
tice when  it  mortgages  his  whole  nature  beside ;  rather 
is  it  greatest,  when  he  maintains  it  in  a  certain  liberty, 
counseling  for  it  and  working  his  great  ends  of  counsel 
by  it.  Nay  it  will  be  greatest,  when  it  is  closest  in  com- 
panionship with  mercy,  thundering  strong  help  in  the 
wars  of  her  subduing  ministry,  and  then  avenging  her 
rejected  goodness  at  the  close. 

In  just  the  same  way  it  might  be  shown,  going  over 
the  ground  again,  that  mercy  never  bears  so  grand  a 

Both  most  hon-  look'  or  moves  so  majestically,  as  when 

orabie  when  work-  she  takes  counsel  of  justice.     No  man 

is  ever  so  magnificently  just  as  he  that 

can  be  even  tenderly  merciful,  no  man  so  truly  merciful 


CHAP.  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  289 

as  one  that  can  hold  steadily  exact  the  balance  of  truth 
and  justice.  Our  highest  impressions  of  God's  justice 
are  obtained,  when  we  conceive  it  as  the  partly  dis- 
cretionary dispensation  of  a  mind  in  the  tenderness  and 
loving  patience  of  the  cross ;  our  highest  impressions  of 
his  mercy,  when  we  conceive  it  as  the  wonderful  sacri- 
fice to  which  even  his  justice  allows  him  to  bend. 
Little  honor  then  does  any  one  pay  to  God's  judicial 
majesty,  in  a  scheme  of  satisfaction  that  takes  away  his 
right  of  discretion,  and  requires  him  to  stand  for  his  exact 
equivalent  of  pain,  according  to  the  count  of  arithmetic. 

In  this  exposition  of  the  antagonism  between  justice, 
and  mercy,  I  have  said  nothing  of  what  may  even  be 
taken  as  being,  in  a  certain  view,  their  They  even  coa- 
radical  union.  It  is  a  little  remarkable  lesce  at  the  root- 
how  near  many  writers  will  come  to  this  conclusion, 
when  treating  of  the  harmony  of  God's  attributes,  who 
will  yet,  when  treating  of  atonement,  represent  God's 
justice  and  mercy  in  a  thoroughly  grim  aspect  of  col- 
lision. Take  the  following  very  respectable  exam- 
ple : — "  Wherefore  we  must  so  conceive  of  them  as  that, 
in  all  respects,  they  may  be  consistent  and  harmonious ; 
as  that  his  wisdom  may  not  clash  with  his  goodness, 
nor  his  goodness  with  his  wisdom ;  as  that  his  mercy 
may  not  jostle  with  his  justice,  nor  his  justice  with  his 
mercy ;  that  is  we  must  conceive  of  him  to  be  as  wise 
as  he  can  be  with  infinite  goodness,  as  good  as  he  can 
be  with  infinite  wisdom,  as  just  as  he  can  be  with  in- 
finite mercy,  as  merciful  as  he  can  be  with  infinite 

25 


290  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN 

justice.  For  to  be  wise  beyond  what  is.  good,  is  craft; 
to  be  good  beyond  what  is  wise,  is  dotage;  to  be.  just 
beyond  what  is  merciful,  is  rigor ;  to  be  merciful  beyond 
what  is  just,  is  easiness;  that  is,  they  are  all  imperfec- 
tion, so  far  as  they  are  beyond  what  is  perfect.  Where- 
fore we  ought  to  be  very  careful  not  to  represent  these 
his  moral  perfections  as  running  a  tilt  at  one  another ; 
but  to  conceive  them  altogether  as  one  entire  perfection ; 
which,  though  it  exerts  itself  in  different  ways,  and 
actions,  and  operates  diversely,  according  to  the  diver- 
sities of  its  objects,  and  accordingly  admits  of  different 
names,  such  as  wisdom,  goodness,  justice,  and  mercy, 
yet  is  in  itself  but  one  simple  and  indivisible  principle  of 
action"*  The  assumption  appears  to  be  that  all  God's 
attributes,  being  at  one  in  his  righteousness,  may  so  far 
condition  each  other  as  to  maintain  a  measurely  and 
helpful  working  with  each  other.  Where  then  shall 
we  put  the  case  of  one  totally  blocking  another,  and 
refusing  to  allow  a  step  of  movement  till  it  has  gotten 
its  complete  satisfaction?  And  if  justice  may  block 
the  way  of  mercy,  why  may  not  mer^y  as  properly 
block  the  way  of  justice?  To  say,  in  such  a  case,  that 
both  "  are  one  simple  and  indivisible  principle  of  ac- 
tion "  does  not  appear  to  be  very  significant.  What  we 
call  love  does  itself  require  justice  to  be  done,  in  a  cer- 
tain contingency,  because  it  is  necessary  to  the  fit 
maintenance  of  law,  and  the  order  and  safety  of  God's 
kingdom.  What  we  call  mercy  is  agreed  by  all  to  be 
the  natural  behest  of  love.  Justice  and  mercy  there- 

*  Scott's  Works,  Vol.  II.,  p.  204. 


CHAP.  IH.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  291 

fore,  both  alike,  are  so  far  forms  of  love.  Again  the 
same  is  true  of  righteousness,  or  right — this  requires 
both  justice  and  mercy ;  for  no  being  can  ever  think 
himself  righteous,  who  does  not  exercise  mercy  where 
mercy  is  possible — "faithful  and  just"  [righteous,]  says 
an  apostle  "  to  forgive  us  our  sins."*  God  will  be  just, 
retributively,  because  he  is  righteous.  He  will  also  be 
merciful  and  forgiving,  because  he  is  righteous. 

In  our  own  human  judgments,  we  strike  into  this 
conception  readily,  however  difficult  it  may  be  to  find 
how  the  two  are  compatible.  A  distin-  A  fact  for  illus. 
guished  English  preacher,  traveling  in  tration. 
the  country,  is  stopped  by  a  highwayman  demanding  his 
purse.  He  descends  composedly  from  his  horse,  and 
falling  on  his  knees,  offers  a  prayer  for  the  guilty  man, 
that  he  may  be  regained  to  a  better  mode  of  life. 
Rising  he  says — "  Now  go  home  with  me  and  take  the 
place  I  will  give  you  in  my  family,  never  to  be  exposed, 
always  to  be  cared  for,  there  to  win  a  character  and  be 
known  from  this  time  forth,  God  helping  you,  as  a 
Christian  man."  The  offer  is  accepted,  the  promise 
fulfilled,  and  the  man  is  known  from  that  time  forth,  as 
an  example  of  fidelity  and  true  piety  towards  God ; 
only  giving  the  story  himself  many  years  after,  on  the 
death  of  his  benefactor.  Has  it  ever  occurred  to  any 
one  that,  in  such  benefaction,  he  was  not  a  righteous 
man  ?  Had  he  ever  a  scruple  himself  that  he  was  not? 
Was  he  not  also  a  man  who,  in  a  different  case,  where 
no  such  opportunity  of  mercy  was  left,  would  stand 

*  1  John  L  9. 


292  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN      PART  III. 

firmly  by  the  laws,  and  the  rigid  execution  of  justice? 
Did  he  ever  even  think  to  accuse  himself,  as  being  in 
the  fault  of  laxity  concerning  justice?  And  yet  he 
appears,  when  judged  by  the  judicial  analogies,  to  have 
become  accessory  after  the  fact,  by  concealing  the  crime 
committed ;  or  if  not  accessory,  to  have  been  guilty  of 
compounding  a  felony.  What  then  shall  we  say  of 
him,  but  that,  being  a  simply  righteous  man,  he  thought 
of  something  juster  than  political  justice;  viz.,  to  for- 
give, recover,  and  save  ? 

Practically  then,  however  we  may  speculate  on  the 
subject,  we  have  no  difficulty  in  allowing  the  compati- 
Anaio  in  kility  of  justice  and  mercy,  and  regard- 
t,he  correlation  of  ing  them  rather  as  complementary  than 
contrary,  one  to  the  other.  May  we  not 
even  suspect  that  it  is  with  them,  much  as  it  is  in  what 
is  now  called  "the  correlation  of  forces?"  They  seem 
indeed  to  be,  and  in  fact  really  are,  very  different  one 
from  the  other — what  can  be  more  unlike  in  one  view, 
than  the  severities  of  God's  justice,  and  the  benigni- 
ties of  his  mercy  ? — and  yet,  as  we  are  shown  that  motion 
is  heat  or  convertible  into  it,  and  heat  into  motion,  and 
both  into  light,  and  all  into  chemical  affinity,  and  as  all 
these  forces,  externally  viewed  so  very  unlike,  are 
even  radically  one  and  the  same,  it  should  not  be  diffi- 
cult to  allow  that  the  antagonism  of  these  coordinate  fac- 
tors in  religion,  so  greatly  magnified  hitherto,  is  after 
all  a  case  of  identity  rather — not  of  identity  in  the 
experience,  but  of  identity  in  the  root  and  causative 
force  in  which  they  spring.  Is  there  not  as  good  reason 


CHAP.  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  293 

to  imagine  that  motion  is  hurrying  away  from  light,  and 
light  pitching  into  chemical  affinity,  and  this  using 
up  the  heat  of  the  planet  so  that  by  and  by  the  stabil- 
ity and  habitable  order  of  it  will  be  gone?  and  should 
we  not  set  ourselves,  in  the  same  way,  to  find  how  the 
Creator  is  going  to  make  compensations  to  the  forces, 
for  the  losses  they  suffer  from  each  other  ?  And  yet 
behold  no  single  pennyweight  is  lost,  for  all  the  forces 
are  one ! 

On  the  whole  this  matter  of  a  contrived  compensation 
to  justice,  which  so  many  take  for  a  gospel,  appears  to 
me  to  contain  about  the  worst  reflec- 

Compensation 
tion    upon   God's   justice  that  COUld  be    theories  issued  in 

stated,  without  some  great  offense  against  mock  truth8' 
reverence;  for  in  whatever  manner  the  compensation, 
or  judical  satisfaction,  is  conceived  to  be  made,  in  the 
suffering  of  Christ,  we  shall  find  every  thing  pushed 
off  the  basis  of  truth.  The  justice  satisfied  is  satisfied 
with  injustice  I  the  forgiveness  prepared  is  forgiveness 
on  the  score  of  pay!  the  judgment-day  award  dis- 
claims the  fact  of  forgiveness  after  payment  made,  and 
even  refuses  to  be  satisfied,  taking  payment  again! 
What  meantime  has  become  of  the  penalties  threatened, 
and  where  is  the  truth  of  the  law  ?  The  penalties 
threatened,  as  against  wrong  doers,  are  not  to  be  exe- 
cuted on  them,  because  they  have  been  executed  on  a 
right  doer !  viz.,  Christ.  And  it  is  only  in  some  logi- 
cally formal,  or  theologically  fictitious,  sense,  that  they 
are  executed  even  on  him.  Many  of  the  best  teachers, 
it  is  true,  have  maintained  that  God's  threatenings  do 

25* 


29-1  THE    ANTAGONISM    BETWEEN       PART  III 

not  amount  to  a  pledge  of  his  veracity  ;*  and  it  is  very 
true  that  no  one  will  complain  of  any  lack  of  veracity, 
in  the  fact  that  they  are  not  executed  against  him,  as 
he  might  where  a  promise  of  good  is  not  fulfilled  in  his 
favor.  Still  there  is  obviously  something  due  to  God's 
dignity  in  the  matter.  Allowing  that,  in  some  given 
case,  he  might  safely  do  better  by  a  transgressor  than 
to  execute  the  threatened  penalty,  it  is  very  plain  that 
an  attempt  to  rule  in  the  general,  by  a  mere  vaporing 
of  penalty,  or  by  penalties  always  to  be  remitted,  would 
indicate  a  want  of  system  and  magistrative  firmness, 
too  closely  resembled  to  a  want  of  truth,  to  allow  any 
solid  title  to  respect. 

If  it  should  be  objected  that  as  much  defect  of  truth 
is  implied  in  the  mitigations  of  law  and  justice,  under 
the  plan  I  have  sketched,  it  is  enough  to  answer  that 
no  mitigations  are  made  which  were  not  implicitly  un- 
derstood in  the  verbal  threatenings  themselves.  These 
threatenings  only  declared  in  general  what  the  grand 
causalities  of  justice  were  bringing  to  pass,  acting  by 
themselves ;  and  the  specific  variations  to  be  issued  by 
the  interactions  of  rnercy  show  no  abandonment  of  jus- 
tice, and  support  no  charge  of  discrepancy,  as  long  as 
the  retributive  causalities  continue  under  their  naturally 
immutable  laws.  First  there  is  a  natural  order  of  jus- 
tice, then  there  is  a  supernatural  order  of  mercy  inter- 
acting with  it.  And  the  working  of  the  two  is  so  diffi- 
cult to  be  traced,  so  complex  in  its  modes  and  issues, 
that  no  judicial  sanction  could  be  verbally  stated,  that 

*  Discourses  and  Treatises  by  Dr.  Park.    Introductory  Essay,  p.  16. 


CHAP.  III.  JUSTICE    AND    MERCY.  295 

is  more  exact  or  closer  to  the  truth  of  justice,  than  that 
which  is  in  fact  asserted  in  the  penalties  denounced. 
Why  then  should  any  fault  of  truth  be  felt,  when 
there  is  no  vaporing  in  terrorem,  or  shuffling  in  contra- 
ries, but  only  a  regular  going  on  of  justice  and  mercy 
— the  natural  order  and  the  supernatural — moving 
with  locked  hands,  sometimes  issuing  a  deliverance, 
and  sometimes  a  finality  of  retribution ;  neither,  at  all, 
violating  the  other  as  an  everlasting  and  fixed  ordi- 
nance, and  both  even  helping  each  other  into  a  range 
of  dignity  and  power  otherwise  unattainable.  The  for- 
givenesses promised  are  not  emptied  of  sound  reality  as 
such,  by  the  fact  that -they  are  legally  paid  for.  The 
perils  of  justice  are  the  real  perils  of  real  justice,  not  of 
justice  satisfied.  What  mercy  can  do,  and  what  jus- 
tice will,  is  clear  as  the  nature  of  both ;  for  both  stand 
fast  together,  as  they  have  eternally,  in  God's  unchange- 
able righteousness. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   LAW  PRECEPT  DULY  SANCTIFIED. 

THE  doctrine  of  the  chapter  just  concluded  super- 
sedes, it  will  be  observed,  all  those  compensational  con- 
trivances for  the  saving  of  God's  justice,  which  have 
been  the  labor  of  theology  under  this  head  of  atone- 
ment; showing  how  justice  and  mercy  are  factors  in 
God's  plan  working  safely  together,  and  are  comple- 
mentary in  part  to  each  other  by  reason  of  the  an- 
tagonism of  their  functions  ;  showing  also  how,  by  this 
same  qualified  antagonism,  the  order  of  God's  plan  is 
made  sure,  and  his  ends  of  government  accomplished. 
This  I  believe  to  be  the  doctrine  of  scripture  and,  of 
course,  to  be  true.  Still  it  is  a  kind  of  truth  that  re- 
quires time  and  reflection,  and  is  not  likely  to  approve 
itself  generally  at  once.  Having  therefore  given  it  forth 
to  work  suggestively,  and  finally  to  approve  itself,  I 
consent  to  waive  it,  and  go  on  with  my  argument,  by 
another  course  that  is  separate  and  is  no  way  depend- 
ent on  it. 

Holding  now  in  view  the  same  particular  apprehen- 
sions of  damage,  from  the  introduction  of  forgiveness 
and  free  justification,  that  were  mentioned  in  the  close 
of  the  third  chapter,  I  propose,  in  this  and  the  two  fol- 


CHAP.  IV.  THE  LAW  PRECEPT,    ETC.  297 

lowing  chapters,  to  go  over  them  in  order,  and  show 
that  the  said  grounds  of  apprehended  damage  do 
not  exist;  or  that,  if  they  might  exist,  they  are  ade- 
quately provided  against.  I  do  not  say  that  they  are 
provided  against  by  any  strictly  compensative  arrange- 
ments, though  I  shall  bring  forward  and  specify  things 
which  others  may  take  as  compensatory,  in  respect  to 
law  and  justice,  if  they  choose. 

We  shall  be  discussing,  in  these  chapters,  what  many 
take  for  the  whole  subject ;  viz.,  the  ground  of  forgive- 
ness ;  but  as  this,  in  the  view  I  am  giving,  is  no  real 
subject  at  all,  I  do  not  propose  the  matter  to  be  investi- 
gated in  that  form.  I  propose  rather  to  inquire  what 
is  the  working  of  forgiveness  itself,  as  accomplished  by 
the  Moral  Power  of  Christ  in  his  Sacrifice  ?  It  appears 
to  be  supposed  that  forgiveness  is  a  mere  letting  go  of 
the  guilty,  just  as  a  man  who  has  been  injured  by 
another  lets  him  go,  consentingly,  without  further  blame. 
But  there  is  this  very  immense  difference,  if  we  will  not 
be  deceived  by  the  most  superficial  notion  possible,  be- 
tween our  letting  go  of  an  adversary  and  God's,  that, 
while  our  adversary  is  wholly  quit  of  our  impeachment, 
God's  is  really  bound  fast  in  the  chains  of  justice  and 
penal  causation,  and  held  as  fixedly  in  their  fires,  after 
he  is  let  go,  as  before.  Merely  telling  him  that  he  is 
forgiven  signifies  nothing,  even  though  it  be  by  a  voice 
from  heaven.  -  He  must  le  forgiven,  the  forgiveness 
must  be  executed,  by  an  inward  change  that  takes  him 
out  of  his  bondages,  and  the  hell  of  penal  causations 
loosed  by  his  sin,  and  brings  him  forth  into  the  liberties  of 


298  THE    LAW    PRECEPT  PART  IIL 

love  and  adoption.  This  will  be  effected  by  the  grace 
of  Christ  in  his  vicarious  sacrifice.  And  then  the  ques- 
tion follows,  how  the  forgiveness,  the  real  deliverance 
accomplished  by  him,  may  consist  with  the  precept,  and 
the  enforcements  of  law,  and  the  rectoral  justice  of 
God  ?  No  ground  of  forgiveness  is  wanted ;  but  only 
that  the  forgiveness  itself  be  executed  in  a  way  to  save 
all  the  great  interests  of  eternal  authority  and  gov- 
ernment. 

The  first  named  ground  of  apprehension  is,  that  the 
law  precept  may  seem  to  be  loosely  held  and  fall  into 
practical  dishonor.  Do  we  then  make  void  the  law 
through  faith  ?  God  forbid ;  yea  we  establish  the  law. 

I  turn  the  question  here,  as  regards  the  precept  of  the 
law,  upon  the  particular  word  honor  •  partly  because  it 
is  historical,  being  a  favorite  word  of 
saves  the  honors  Anselm  for  such  uses ;  and  partly  because 
of  the  law  pre-  there  is  no  other  word  so  appropriate. 
Sin  dishonors  the  law,  breaks  it  down, 
tramples  it  in  customary  contempt,  raises  a  feeling  of 
disrespect  in  mankind  strong  enough  to  be  itself  called 
the  law  of  this  world.  Hence  the  necessity  of  punish- 
ment; which  is  that  self-asserting  act  of  God,  in  its 
behalf,  by  which  he  invests  it  with  honor.  For  it  must 
be  remembered  here,  that  we  are  not  looking  for  some 
scheme  of  penal  substitution,  compensation,  satisfaction, 
but  are,  in  fact,  discussing  the  great  question  how  it  is 
that  God  forgives ;  or,  what  is  the  same,  accomplishes  the 
restoration  of  fallen  character?  Where  it  is  coming 
out,  that  he  gets  a  great  part  of  this  power,  not  by  his 


CHAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  299 

mere  love  and  suffering  patience  and  divine  sympathy 
in  Christ,  but  also  in  part  by  the  invigoration  of  law 
and  its  moral  impressions.  A  very  small  matter  it  will 
be  in  this  view,  that  he  manages  to  just  save  the  law  by 
some  judicial  compensation — he  does  infinitely  more, 
he  intensifies  and  deepens  the  impression  of  law,  to  such 
a  degree  that  it  comes  out  reenacted,  as  it  were,  to  be 
fulfilled  in  a  higher  key  of  observance. 

To  make  this  very  important  fact  apparent,  attention 
is  called  to  four  distinct  points  of  view,  in  which  Christ, 
by  his  sacrifice,  magnifies,  if  I  should  not  rather  say 
glorifies,  the  precept  of  the  law. 

I.  He  restores  men  to  the  precept.  If  there  were  no  in- 
stituted law,  none  but  the  law  before  government,  there 
would  be  no  doubt  of  this.  But  the  in-  Christ  restores  to 
stituted  law  goes  by  enforcement,  and  the  P1"606?1- 
is.  honored  because  of  the  enforcement ;  how  then  can 
it  be  honored  in  a  loss  of  the  same,  that  is  in  forgive- 
ness? Because,  I  answer,  the  subject  forgiven  is  re- 
stored to  all  precept ;  not  to  the  Eight  or  Precept  Ab- 
solute only,  but  impliedly  to  all  the  statutes  of  God's  in- 
stituted government,  for  the  application  and  the  enforced 
sanction  of  that.  No  matter  then  if  the  forgiven  soul 
is  taken  clean  by  the  sanctions,  to  think  only  of  pre- 
cept. All  the  more  and  not  the  less  does  he  honor  it, 
that  he  is  brought  into  a  love  of  it,  and  of  God  by 
whom  it  is  enforced,  such  that  his  obedience  becomes 
an  inspiration.  We  may  even  say  that  he  is  released 
from  the  law  wherein  he  was  held ;  but  we  only  mean 


300  THE    LAW    PRECEPT  PART  HL 

that  the  righteousness  of  the  law  is  fulfilled  in  him,  by 
the  free  assent  of  his  liberty,  outrunning  all  enforcement. 
If  then  Christ  restores  to  such  a  noble  conformity,  rais- 
ing the  whole  stature  of  life  and  quality  of  being  in  them 
that  are  restored,  how  can  it  be  said  that  the  precept  of 
the  law  is  made  void  or  put  in  dishonor  ?  Is  it  any 
more  dishonored,  or  made  void,  in  the  case  of  such  as 
are  not,  and  will  not  be,  restored  ?  Has  any  remission 
been  extended  to  them  ?  Just  contrary  to  that,  they 
are  going  to  be  made  responsible  in  fact  and  in  strict 
justice,  for  their  contempt  and  rejection,  not  of  the  pre- 
cept only  but  of  the  great  mercy  tendered  them,  to 
help  their  recovery  into  it. 

On  the  whole,  there  appears  to  be  no  single  point 
where  any  loss  of  honor  can  be  imagined,  as  far  as  the 
precept  is  concerned.  Christ  beholds  it  from  the  first 
moment  onward,  doing  nothing  and  wanting  nothing, 
in  all  the  immense  travail  of  his  incarnate  ministry  and 
death,  but  to  commend  the  Eighteousness  and  Beauty  of 
it,  and  regain  lost  men  to  that  homage  which  is  at 
once  their  own  blessedness  and  its  everlasting  honor. 

II.  Christ  honors  the  precept,  not  only  in  what  he 

does  for  our  sake,  in  rqstoring  us  to  it  and  forgiving  us 

in  it,  but  quite  as  much  in  what  he  does 

Christ    rcas- 

serts  and  cstab-   *or  lts  sake,  to  restore  and  save  it  also. 


lishestheiaw  it-   por  now  snan  ne  so  magnify  the  law,  as 

by  setting  it  on  high,  enthroning   it  in 

love,  organizing  in  it  a  kingdom  worthy  of  its  breadth, 

beneficence,  dignity,  and  all-encompassing  order  ?     We 


CHAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  301 

often  magnify  Christ's  work  as  being  a  work  of  salva- 
tion for  men,  because  it  is  in  this  view  that  it  makes  an 
appeal  so  persuasive  to  human  feeling;  but  there  is 
nothing  he  would  spurn  himself,  with  a  more  total  dis- 
allowance, than  the  thought  of  a  salvation  gotten  up 
lor  men,  one  side  of  the  grand,  everlasting  law,  in  which 
God's  empire  stands.  We  greatly  mistake,  if  we  think 
that  Christ  is  doing  every  thing  here,  as  prosecuting  a 
suit  before  human  feeling,  and  to  bring  human  souls  out 
of  trouble;  he  wants  to  bring  them  into  righteousness; 
and  that  again,  not  for  their  sakes  only,  but  a  great  deal 
more  for  righteousness'  sake ;  to  heal  the  elemental 
war,  and  settle  everlasting  order,  in  that  good  law  which 
is  the  inherent  principle  of  order. 

What  meaning  there  may  be  in  this  ought,  hence- 
forth, to  be  never  a  secret  to  our  American  people. 
[n  our  four  years  of  dreadful  civil  war,  what  immense 
sacrifices  of  blood  and  treasure  have  we  made ;  refusing 
to  be  weakened  by  sorrow,  or  shaken  by  discourage- 
ment, or  even  to  be  slackened  by  unexpected  years  of 
delay.  Failure  was  prophesied  on  every  hand ;  compo- 
sitions were  proposed  without  number.  Yet  nothing 
could  meet  our  feeling  but  to  save  the  integrity  of  our 
institutions,  and  forever  establish  the  broken  order  of 
the  law.  All  the  stress  of  our  gigantic  effort  hinged  on 
this  and  this  alone.  No  composition  could  be  endured, 
or  even  thought  of,  that  did  not  settle  us  in  obedience, 
and  pacify  us  in  the  sovereignty  of  law ;  and,  to  the 
more  rational  of  us,  nothing  appeared  to  lay  a  suffi- 
ciently firm  basis  of  order,  but  the  clearance  somehow 

26 


302  THE    LAW    PRECEPT  PART  III. 

of  that  which  has  been  the  mockery  of  our  principles, 
and  the  ferment  even,  from  the  first,  of  our  discord. 
The  victory  we  sighed  for,  and  the  salvation  we  sought, 
were  summed  up  in  the  victory  and  salvation  of  law. 
Failing  in  this  every  thing  would  be  lost.  Succeeding  in 
this  all  sacrifice  was  cheap,  even  that  of  our  first-born. 

What  now  do  we  see  in  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  but 
that  he,  only  in  a  vastly  higher  and  more  grandly  heroic 
devotion  of  his  life,  is  doing  all  for  the  violated  honor 
and  broken  sovereignty  of  law.  He  proposes,  indeed, 
to  be  a  Saviour  to  men ;  but  the  gist  of  the  salvation, 
both  to  us  and  to  him,  is  that  heaven's  original  order  is 
to  be  restored  in  us,  and  made  solid  and  glorious,  in  the 
crowning  of  God's  instituted  government  forever. 
Every  thing  that  we  see  therefore,  in  the  incarnate  life 
and  suffering  death,  is  God  magnifying  the  honors  of 
his  law  by  the  stress  of  his  own  stupendous  sacrifice. 
Such  an  amount  of  feeling,  put  into  the  governmental 
order,  commends  it  to  our  feeling ;  and  also  turns  our 
feeling  into  awe  before  it.  The  law  is  raised  as  precept, 
in  this  manner,  to  a  new  pitch  of  honor,  and  the  power 
of  impression  given  to  it,  by  the  vicarious  sacrifice  and 
more  than  mortal  heroism  of  Jesus,  is  the  principal 
cause  of  that  immense  progress  in  moral  sensibility  and 
opinion,  that  distinguishes  the  Christian  populations  of 
the  world.  What  they  so  much  feel  and  have  coming 
in  upon  their  moral  sensibility,  in  ways  so  piercing,  is 
the  law  of  duty,  glorified  by  suffering  and  the  visibly 
divine  sacrifice  of  the  cross. 


CHAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  303 

III.  Christ  adds  authority  and  honor  to  the  law-pre- 
cept, as  being,  in  his  own  person,  the  incarnation  of  it 
In  itself,  what  we  call  law  is  impersonal,  „  .  , . 

He  is  himself  the 

a  cold  mandatory  of  abstraction.  Its  incarnation  of  the 
authority,  as  such,  is  the  conviction  it  is  precept- 
able  to  produce  of  its  own  imperative  right.  An  ad- 
ditional honor  and  authority  is  given  it  also,  when  God 
reaffirms  it,  and  from  the  point  of  his  invisible  majesty, 
assumes  the  maintenance  of  it.  A  certain  authority  is 
gained  for  it  also  by  impressive  circumstance,  when  it 
is  delivered  from  the  thundering  and  smoking  mountain 
top.  By  the  cold  intimidation  of  such  a  pronounce- 
ment, it  even  becomes  appalling ;  it  makes  the  people 
quake  and  shiver.  Still  the  coldness  and  the  stern 
decretive  majesty  partly  benumb  conviction.  To  have 
its  full  authority  felt,  it  must  be  brought  nigh  in  its  true 
geniality  and  warmth,  as  a  gift  to  the  higher  nature  of 
souls ;  exactly  as  it  is,  when  it  is  incarnated  and  made 
personal  in  Christ,  addressing  human  conviction  by 
his  human  voice.  For  Christ  is  not,  as  many  seem  to 
fancy,  a  mere  half-character  of  God  incarnate,  a  kind  of 
incarnate  weakness  in  the  figure  of  a  love-principle, 
separated  from  every  thing  else  in  God's  greatness,  nec- 
essary to  the  tonic  vigor  of  love.  Being  the  incarna- 
tion of  God,  the  full  round  character  of  God  as  he  is 
must  be  included — authority,  justice,  purity,  truth,  for- 
giveness, gentleness,  suffering  love,  all  excellence.  All 
these,  in  fact,  belong  to  God's  character,  and  they  are 
here  brought  nigh,  brought  into  concrete  expression, 
thus  to  be  entered,  by  Christ,  as  a  complete  moral 


304  THE    LAW    PRECEPT  PART  111. 

power,  into  souls.     They  work  all  together,  in  his  chari- 
ties, in  his  miracles,  in  his  doctrine,  in  his  death,  resur- 
gent with  him,  as  it  were,  when  he  rises  and  goes  up  on 
high,  there  to  assume  the   kingdom  with  him  and  to 
judge  the  worlds.      Hence  the  remarkable  authority 
that  is  felt  to  be  somehow  embodied  in  him,  even  from 
the  first.     There  is  really  more  of  authority  for  the  pre- 
cept of  law,  in  the  fifth  chapter  of  Matthew,  than  there 
is  in  the  whole  five  books  of  Moses ;  nay,  there  is  more 
in  his  simple  beatitudes  themselves.     For  moral  ideas 
and  the  claims  of  duty  under  God,  are  brought  specially 
nigh,  when  spoken  thus,  out  of  human  feeling,  to  the 
living  sensibility  and  conscious  want  of  human  hearts. 
Scarcely  necessary  was  it  for  him  to  add,  that  no  jot  or 
tittle  of  the  law  should  fail ;  still  less,  when  the  myste- 
rious authority  of  his  manner  and  person  were  always 
enforcing  the  same  impression.     He  spake  with  author- 
ity, they  said,  and  not  as  the   Scribes,    "never   man 
spake  like  this  man."     His  simple  definition,  or  sum- 
mation of  law — "  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God 
with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy 
mind.     This  is  the  first  and  great  commandment.     And 
the  second  is  like  unto  it.     Thou  shalt  love  thy  neigh- 
bor as  thyself" — seemed,  to  the  captious  scribe,  a  kind 
of  second  giving  of  the  law,    so  divinely   impressive 
was  the  manner,    and  he  durst  not  question   farther. 
Nothing  could  be  more  natural;  for,  in  his  person,  not 
the  love  only,  but  the  law,  nay,  the  instituted  govern- 
ment of  God  itself  is  incarnated  and  become  a  person. 
It  is  seen  when   he  is  looked  upon,  heard    when  ho 


CHAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  305 

speaks.  What  then  shall  be  so  felt  as  the  authority  of 
his  manner  ?  How  else  shall  law,  too,  get  a  presence 
so  majestic  in  the  world,  as  when  it  thus  becomes  the 
good,  great  King  of  promise — Immanuel — Messiah? 
But  these  are  all  inferior  and  scarcely  more  than  acces- 
sory arguments;  the  principal  remains  to  be  added 
which  is  this — 

TV.  The  almost  inconceivable  honor  Christ  confers 
on  the  law  precept,  in  the  fact  that  his  incarnation,  life, 
and  death  upon  the  cross — all  that  I  have  „.  ,.f  , ,  . 

His  hfe  and  death 

included  in  his  vicarious  sacrifice — are   are  his  obedience 
the  fruit  of  his  own  free  homage  and  * 
eternally  acknowledged  obligation  to  the  law ;  in  one 
word  his  deific  obedience. 

[  have  spoken  of  the  law  before  government,  the 
eternal  absolute  law  of  right.  Under  it,  and  by  it,  as 
existing  in  logical  order  before  God's  perfections,  even 
they,  as  we  found  reason  to  believe,  have  their  spring. 
It  was  not  necessary  here  to  go  into  any  very  elaborate 
argument ;  for  it  can  not  escape  the  discovery  of  any 
one,  that  if  God  has  moral  perfections  of  any  kind,  they 
must  have  a  standard  law,  and  obtain  their  quality  of 
merit,  by  their  fulfillment  of  that  law.  Of  course  there 
is  no  precedence  of  time  in  the  law,  as  compared  with 
the  date  of  God's  perfections,  but  there  must  be  a  pre- 
cedence of  order,  and  the  law  must  be  obligatory  in 
that  precedence.  But  we  come  now  to  a  matter  which, 
to  most  minds,  will  be  more  remote  and  more  difficult ; 
viz.,  to  the  fact,  that  God  has  not  only  a  character  ever- 

26* 


806  THE    LAW    PRECEPT  PART  IIL 

lastingly  perfected  in  right,  but  that,  by  the  same  law, 
he  is  held  to  a  suffering  goodness  for  his  enemies,  even  to 
that  particular  work  in  time,  which  we  call  the  vicari- 
ous sacrifice  of  Christ.  Christ  was,  in  this  view,  under 
obligation  to  be  the  redeemer  he  was;  and  fulfilling 
that  obligation,  he  conferred  an  honor  on  the  law  ful- 
filled, such  as  could  not  be  conferred  by  any  stringency 
of  justice  laid  upon  the  race  itself.  A  point  so  remote 
from  many,  and  yet  of  so  great  consequence,  requires 
to  be  more  carefully  established. 

Consider  and  make  due  account  then,  of  the  fact,  that 

the  eternal  law  of  right,  which  we  can  not  well  deny  is 

the  basis  of  God's  perfections,  and  of  all 

The     Law    is    ,         . 

Love  and  Love  law  human  and  divine,  is  only  another 
is  vicarious  Sue-  conception  of  the  law  of  love ;  and  that, 

rifice. 

as  the  righteousness  of  God  fulfills  the 
Right,  so  it  is  declared  that  "  God  is  Love,"  as  being 
another  equally  valid  conception  of  his  eternal  perfec- 
tions. The  two  principles,  right  and  love,  appear  to 
exactly  measure  each  other.  One  is  the  law  absolute, 
or  ideal,  commanding  the  soul,  even  if  it  were  to  exist. 
in  solitude ;  the  other  is  the  law  relational/  grounded  on 
the  sense  of  relationship  to  other  beings,  who  may  be 
socially  affected  by  our  acts.  Thus  every  one  who  will 
be  and  do  right,  in  the  large  and  complete  sense  of  the 
principle,  will  as  certainly  love  all  beings,  whether  God 
or  men,  whether  friends  or  enemies,  whether  deserving 
or  unworthy,  with  whom  he  finds  himself  in  relation. 
The  law  of  love  appears  to  be,  in  some  sense,  a  law  of 
revelation,  as  the  law  of  right  is  not.  And  yet  the 


CHAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  307 

law  of  love  is  just  as  truly  grounded  in  nature,  com- 
mands the  assent  of  natural  conviction  just  as  invinci- 
bly, when  it  is  once  stated.  The  only  reason  why  it  is 
not  propounded  universally  as  a  principle  of  natural 
morality,  is  that  the  close  relationality  of  it  is  cross  to 
our  humanly  selfish  habit.  We  can  talk  of  being  right, 
and  are  willing  to  think  of  that  as  a  duty,  because  we 
can  put  a  lower,  merely  conventional,  and  market  sense 
on  the  word,  that  accommodates  our  self-approbation- ; 
but  we  shrink  from  the  law  of  love,  and  do  not  propose 
it  in  our  schemes  of  ethics,  because  we  do  not  con- 
sciously recognize  and  practically  own  the  brotherhood 
of  other  beings.  In  a  certain  philanthropic  and  roman- 
tic way,  we  do  it,  but  to  have  the  law  drawn  close 
enough  to  put  us  under  bonds  of  concern  for  them,  and 
even  of  suffering  and  sacrifice  for  their  sake,  is  not  a 
kind  of  standard  that  we  naturally  propose.  Very 
admirable  and  truly  great  is  the  example,  when  it  is 
fulfilled ;  we  are  even  quite  melted  in  the  tenderness  it 
excites;  but  the  goodness  is  too  nearly  superlative,  the 
standard  too  high,  and  wejook  for  some  other  in  some 
lower  key. 

But  this  will  not  be  the  manner  of  God.  Love  -to 
him  is  Eight  and  Eight  to  hkn  is  Love.  And,  as  ce*r- 
tainly  as  he  is  in  this  law  of  love,  he  Christ  fulfills 
will  suffer  the  pains  of  love,  he  will  go  eternal  obligation. 
beyond  all  terms  of  mere  justice  or  desert,  yield  up 
resentments,  pass  by  wrongs  already  suffered,  put  him- 
self in  a  way  to  receive  the  wrongs  and  bear  the  vio- 
lence even  of  personal  enemies,  if  he  can  hope  to  do 


308  THE    LAW    PRECEPT  PART  III. 

them  good  with  no  counterbalancing  injury.  In  a 
word,  he  will  so  insert  himself  into  the  miseries,  and 
even  into  the  guilt  of  their  state,  as  to  have  them  as  a 
burden  on  his  feeling,  contriving,  by  whatever  method, 
at  whatever  expense,  to  bring  them  relief.  All  this 
in  eternal  obligation.  "We  do  not  commonly  speak  of 
God  as  a  being  under  obligation,  because,  being  trans- 
gressors ourselves,  we  associate  some  idea  of  constraint 
and  even  fear  with  obligation;  yet  what  are  God's 
moral  perfections,  but  his  mind's  free  homage  to  bind- 
ing principles?  And  if  the  principles  are  not  good 
enough  to  bind,  what  is  the  merit  of  their  observance  ? 
God  is  of  course  amenable  to  no  law,  as  prescribed  by 
a  superior — enough  that  he  is  freely,  gloriously,  ame- 
nable to  law,  in  its  own  self-asserting  majesty ;  that 
which,  like  himself,  is  eternal,  that  which  he  "  possessed 
in  the  beginning  of  his  way,  before  his  works  of  old." 
Perhaps  it  is  better  not  to  say  that  he  is  under  law,  lest 
we  associate  some  constraint,  or  limitation,  but  that  he 
is  in  it,  has  it  for  the  spring  of  his  character  and  coun- 
sel, and  so  of  his  beatitude  for  ever.  Even  as  Hooker 
eloquently  says — "  that  law  which  hath  been  of  God 
and  with  God  everlastingly" — "it  is  laid  up  in  the 
bosom  of  God." 

God  then  does  not  make  the  law  of  love,  or  impose 
it  upon  us  by  his  own  mere  will.  It  is  with  him  as  an 
eternal,  necessary,  immutable,  law,  existing  in  logical 
order  before  his  will,  and  commanding,  in  the  right  of 
its  own  excellence,  his  will  and  life.  This  being  given, 
all  his  plans,  decrees,  creations,  and  executory  statutes 


CHAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  309 

are  built  to  it,  as  the  heavens  by  the  eternal  laws  of 
geometry.  And  so,  all  government  being  cast  in  this 
mold,  God  is  united  to  creatures,  creatures  to  God  and 
to  each  other,  by  this  one  common  term,  which  inter- 
prets and  unifies  all.  Were  there  any  being,  whether 
Creator,  or  creature,  who  had  a  different  kind  of  law, 
prescribing  a  different  kind  of  virtue,  he  would  be  un- 
intelligible to  the  others,  and  practically  unrelated  to 
them.  And  his  virtue,  call  it  by  what  ever  epithets  of 
distinction,  could  not  even  pass  the  audit  of  a  common 
respect  and  praise. 

In  this  manner  we  are  prepared  for  the  conclusion 
and  even  brought  down  close  upon  it,  that  Christ  came 
into  the  world,  as  the  incarnate  Word  The  cro8s  not 
and  Saviour  of  sinners,  just  because  the  optional  but  obii- 
eternal,  necessary  law  of  love  made  it  gatory> 
obligatory  in  him  to  be  such  a  Saviour.  It  is  with  him 
even  as  the  apostle  represents,  *when  he  says — "Bear 
ye  one  another's  burdens,  and  so  fulfill  the  law  of  Christ" 
It  is  not  commandment  that  he  speaks  of,  but  it  is  law, 
that  same  which  rested  on  the  divine  nature  and  which 
Christ  fulfilled  in  his  sacrifice ;  that  same  in  which  he 
gave  himself,  for  love's  sake,  even  to  death  for  malefac- 
tors and  enemies.  The  essentially  vicarious  action  of 
the  love-principle  and  the  manner  in  which  it  makes 
the  want,  or  woe,  or  even  sin,  of  others  its  own  personal 
concern,  I  have  sufficiently  shown  already,*  but  I  find 
the  point  so  finely  conceived  by  Edwards,  that  I  am 
tempted  here  to  cite  his  language ;  only  wishing  that 

*  Part  I.,  Chapter  I. 


810  THE    LAW    PRECEPT  PART  IIL 

he  could  have  seen  the  reach  of  what  he  is  saying,  as 
affording  the  only  good  and  right  solution  of  the  sub- 
stitution of  Christ,  or  of  the  scripture  ex- 

The    substitu- 

tionai  action  of  pressions  concerning  it.     "  A  strong  ex- 
love    perceived"  ercise  of  iove  excites  a  lively  idea  of  the 

by  Edwards. 

objects  beloved.  And  a  strong  exercise 
of  pity  excites  a  lively  idea  of  the  misery  under  which 
he  pities  them.  Christ's  love  and  pity  fixed  the  idea 
of  them  in  his  mind,  as  if  he  had  been  really  they, 
and  fixed  their  calamity  in  his  mind  as  though  it  had 
been  really  his.  A  very  strong  and  lively  love  and 
pity  towards  the  miserable  tends  to  make  their  case 
ours ;  as,  in  other  respects  so  in  this,  in  particular,  as  it 
doth,  in  an  idea,  place  us  in  their  stead,  under  their 
misery,  with  a  most  lively,  feeling  sense  of  that  misery  ; 
as  it  were  feeling  it  for  them,  actually  suffering  it  in 
their  stead  by  strong  sympathy."*  Thus  it  was  that 
Christ  bore  his  burden  as  being  under  the  eternal  law 
of  love,  and  so  fulfilled  it  as  to  make  it,  in  some  really 
impressive  sense,  his  law — "  the  law  of  Christ." 

There  was  no  constraint  in  the  obligation,  it  is  true ; 
the  more  wonderful  therefore  is  the  grace  of  the  obedi- 
ence that  is  yielded  so  freely.  And  of  course  the  obli- 
gation, when  we  thus  speak,  is  not  any  obligation  due 
to  us.  "We  had  no  claims  to  lay  upon  him,  any  more 
than  our  enemy  has  a  claim  upon  us,  that  we  shall  sac- 
rifice our  peace,  or  life,  to  his  benefit.  It  was  simply 
obligation  to  the  grand,  everlasting,  essentially  vicari- 
ous principle  of  love,  an  obligation  to  be  gracious,  and 

*  Edwards'  Miscellaneous  Observations,  p.  6. 


CHAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  311 

do  by  his  disobedient  subjects,  since  he  could  well  do 
it,  better  than  they  deserve ;  which  if  he  could  not  con- 
sent to,  he  must  be  quite  another  and  less  approvable 
character  before  the  standards  of  his  own  perfect  mind. 
There  is  nothing  optional,  as  many  conceive  in  his  sac- 
rifice. He  could  renounce  it,  only  as  he  could  the 
honors  of  his  own  perfect  character.  In  it  he  is  just  as 
good  as  he  is  in  obligation  to  be.  If  better,  then  either 
he  is  better  than  he  should  be,  or  the  law  less  good 
than  it  ought  to  be.  Whereas  it  is  the  exact  merit, 
the  glory  of  both,  that  they  punctually  meet  in  the 
utmost  limit  of  good. 

The  conception  of  some  such  obligation,  or  obedience 
to  obligation,'  in  the  work  and  sacrifice  of  Christ,  has 
been  more  or  less  nearly  approached  Anseim  and  Bei- 
by  many.  Thus  Anseim,  while  con-  lamy- 

ceiving  that  Christ  undertakes  the  work  at  his  option, 
still  imagines  a  kind  of  obligation  post  requiring  it  of 
God  himself.  "  Does  not  the  reason  why  God  ought  to 
do  the  things  we  speak  of  seem  absolute  enough,  when 
we  consider  that  the  human  race,  that  work  of  his  so 
very  precious,  was  wholly  ruined,  and  that  it  was  not 
seemly  that  the  purpose  which  God  had  in  man  should 
fall  to  the  ground  ?"*  Bellamy  also  conceives  that  God, 
in  requiring  perfect  obedience  of  man  as  the  condi- 
tion of  his  well  being,  even  carefully  squared  his  own 
action  by  the  golden  rule,  in  a  way  of  volunteer  allegi- 
ance to  it,  saying,  "  I  did  as  well  by  mankind,  as  I 
should  desire  to  have  been  done  by  myself,  had  I  been 

*  Cur  Deus  Homo,  Lib.  1.,  Cap.  iv 


312  THE    LAW    PRECEPT  PART  III. 

in  their  case  and  they  in  mine ;  for  when  my  Son,  who 
is  as  myself,  came  to  stand  in  their  place,  I  required  the 
same  of  him."* 

But  there  is  another  version  of  the  obedience  of 

Christ — the  same  which  is  indicated  in  these  last  words 

— which  requires   our  attention.      Thus 

The  obedience  . 

of  Christ  to  the  many,  giving  to  certain  words  of  scrip- 
Father,  his  obe-  ture  a  meaning  favored  by  their  most 

dience  to  law. 

superficial  acceptation,  look  upon  it  never 
as  the  obedience  of  God  himself  to  the  eternal,  neces- 
sary law,  but  as  being  that  of  a  certain  second  person, 
who  is  somehow  other  and  not  God,  contributed  by  him 
to  God  for  sinners.  Obtaining  thus  a  peculiar  merit 
by  his  suffering  obedience,  the  second  person,  they  con- 
ceive, is  able  to  pay  the  first  for  the  letting  go  of  their 
punishment.  And  they  quote,  as  authority  for  this,  all 
the  texts  that  speak  of  Christ  as  being  sent,  or  com- 
manded by  the  Father,  as  doing  his  will,  as  obedient 
unto  death,  for  the  Father's  reward.  As  if  one  person 
of  the  Trinity,  putting  another  under  command,  and 
sending  him  into  the  world  to  suffer  and  die  for  sin, 
were  any  permissible  account  either  of  the  Trinity,  or 
of  the  suffering.  Why  must  we  take  hold  of  words  in 
this  manner,  without  considering  at  all  the  conditions 
of  the  subject  matter  ?  The  Father  is  above,  represent- 
ing the  eternal  government ;  the  Son  is  a  man  below, 
acting,  so  far,  under  and  obeying  that  government. 
But  in  another,  wholly  consistent  view,  he  is,  in  his 
human  person,  the  express  image  and  outward  type  of 

*  Vol.  1.,  p.  259. 


CIIAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  313 

what  is  most  intense  and  deepest  in  the  character  and 
action  of  God  himself;  representing,  in  what  is  called 
his  obedience  to  the  Father,  the  everlasting  obedience 
of  the  whole  divine  nature  to  the  ideal,  fundamental 
law.  Thus  when  he  testifies — "  I  came  not  to  do  mine 
own  will,  but  the  will  of  him  that  sent  me  " — "  as  the 
Father  gave  me  commandment  so  I  do,"  he  is  to  be 
understood  just  as  he  is  when  he  says — "the  Father  is 
greater  than  I ;"  that  is,  not  as  declaring  his  literal  in- 
feriority, and  his  subjection  as  the  eternal  Son,  or  sec- 
ond person,  to  the  Father's  mandates,  but  as  speaking 
for  the  human  state  he  is  in,  and  refusing  to  be  made 
an  idol  of  in  his  human  figure.  He  is  only  saying,  do 
not  stop  at  me,  and  localize  God  quantitively  in  me, 
when  he  is  only  in  me,  as  being  expressed  by  me.  Let 
your  thought  begin  at  me,  and  then,  counting  me  one 
with  the  Father,  in  what  you  have  discovered  by  me,  let 
it  travel  up  and  crown  itself  in  him.  Having  gotten 
out  of  me  the  feeling  and  character  of  the  God  invisi- 
ble, count  that  having  seen  me  "ye  have  seen  the 
Father  that  sent  me ;"  that,  in  what  I  have  called  my 
obedience  to  Him,  ye  have  seen  that  everlasting  obedi- 
ence to  law,  which  is  the  essence  and  soul  of  his  perfec- 
tions. Let  your  homage  therefore  be  to  Him,  as  the 
God  above  limitation,  discovered  to  your  love  in  and 
by  limitation. 

In  this  manner,  Christ  is  always  contriving  to  carry 
men's  thoughts  above,  or  up  through,  his  humanity, 
and  forbid  their  coming  to  a  period  of  stunted  measure- 
ment in  his  human  person.  He  takes  the  subject  state, 

27 


814  THE    LAW    PRECEPT  PART  HI. 

doing  and  showing  every  thing  in  and  by  that  state, 
and  then,  referring  it  back  to  that  unseen  sovereign 
state  of  which  it  is  the  representation.  Any  other  con- 
ception of  the  matter,  such  as  puts  the  Son  literally 
under  the  tutelage  and  authority  of  the  Father,  is  a 
superstition  put  for  doctrine,  and  not  any  rational  belief. 
God  is  three  in  no  such  sense  that  he  is  not  one  ;  least 
of  all  is  he  three,  in  any  such  sense,  that  he  has  rela- 
tions of  authority  and  subjection  in  his  threeness.  The 
obedience  of  Christ,  then,  represents  just  that  which 
we  have  seen  to  be  included  in  God's  moral  perfection, 
or  righteousness ;  viz.,  the  everlasting  obedience  of  his 
nature  to  the  law  of  right,  or  of  love.  Nay,  if  we  will 
let  our  plummet  down  to  the  bottom  of  this  great  sea, 
the  cross  of  Jesus  represents  and  reveals  the  tremen- 
dous cross  that  is  hid  in  the  bosom  of  God's  love  and 
life  from  eternity. 

It  is  obvious  enough  that,  in  such  a  way  of  obedi- 
ence, Christ  makes  a  contribution  of  honor  to  the  law 
he  obeys,  that  will  do  more  to  enthrone 

The   immense    . 

honor  paid  to  the  it  in  our  reverence,  than  all  the  desecra- 
Law  by  Christ's  tions  of  sin  have  done  to  pluck  it  down 

obedience.  . 

— more  too,  than  all  conceivable  punish- 
ments, to  make  it  felt  and  keep  it  in  respect.  The 
grand  evil  of  sin  is  that  it  tramples  law  and  brings  it 
into  contempt.  Many,  too,  apprehend  danger  from  the 
full  remission  of  sin,  lest  it  should  leave  the  law  tram- 
pled and  without  vindication,  and  reveal  a  kind  of  in- 
difference to  it  in  God,  that  will  be  fatal  to  all  due  im- 
pressions of  its  authority  and  sanctity.  Here  then, 


CHAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  315 

over  against  all  such  damages  and  apprehended  mis- 
chiefs of  laxity,  we  now  place  the  momentous,  grandly 
impressive,  fact  of  Christ's  obedience — his  obedience 
unto  death — taken  as  an  exhibition  of  God's  eternal 
homage  to  law,  and  of  the  cross  of  sacrifice  by  which 
his  feeling  and  will  are  everlastingly  bowed  to  the  bur- 
dens of  pity  and  suffering.  Even  as  Christ  himself 
conceives  the  representative  nature  of  his  whole  life, 
when  he  says — "I  have  glorified  thee  on  the  earth." 

Now  I  do  not  undertake  to  show,  be  it  observed, 
that  Christ  came  into  the  world,  in  a  plan  to  set  his 
obedience  over  against  the  damages  and  compensation 
debts  of  sins ;  or  that  he  came  to  fill  enough  were  com- 
out  any  scheme  of  satisfaction,  or  com-  por 
pensation.  If  any  thing  is  wanting  to  compensate  the 
loss  of  punishment,  it  will  be  enough  that  the  very 
things  suffered  and  done  to  make  the  forgiveness  an 
executed  fact,  give  back  greater  honors  to  the  law  than 
are  lost  by  the  loss  of  punishment.  No,  Christ  came 
just  because  the  law  he  had  been  in  from  eternity  sent 
him,  and  his  incarnate  appearing  was  but  the  necessary 
outcoming  in  time  of  God's  eternal  Love.  He  de- 
scended to  the  lot  of  men  just  because  he  had  them  in 
his  heart.  His  object  was  only  to  minister.  His  com- 
passions, even  before  he  came,  were  tinged  all  through 
with  sorrowing  tenderness.  His  emotional  nature  was 
stung  and  wounded  every  day,  after  he  came,  by  the 
scenes  of  wrong  and  cruelty  he  was  compelled  to  look 
upon,  the  sicknesses,  and  pains,  and  deaths,  and  tor- 
ments of  spiritual  disorder  to  which  he  ministered. 


316  THE    LAW    PRECEPT  PART  III. 

The  storms  of  the  world's  madness  gathered  round  him 
in  his  work,  and  the  inward  storms  of  mental  agony 
rolled  heavily  over  him  sometimes  in  his  private  hours. 
But  his  effort  was  to  simply  fulfill  such  a  ministry  to 
lost  men  as  would  gain  them  back  to  God  and  eternal 
life.  He  strove,  in  particular,  by  his  teachings,  heal- 
ings, sympathies,  and  the  impressions  of  his  personal 
suffering,  to  inaugurate  a  new  and  more  adequate  moral 
power  by  his  ministry ;  so  to  get  hold  of  their  moral 
convictions,  so  to  work  on  their  guiltiness,  by  the  due 
manifestation  of  God,  and  his  love,  as  to  even  regener- 
ate their  character.  And  doing  all  this,  going  even  to 
the  cross  for  love's  sake,  in  a  perfectly  simple  devotion, 
what  will  more  certainly  follow  than  that  even  the  law 
thus  gloriously  fulfilled  in  his  ministry,  is  itself  raised 
into  power  by  the  honor  he  confers  upon  it  ?  Every 
thing  gets  a  moral  power  that  he  touches,  or  looks 
upon — the  Jordan,  that  he  went  down  into  it;  Naza- 
reth, that  it  saw  his  childhood;  Capernaum,  that  it 
heard  his  first  sermon ;  the  waters  of  Gennessaret, 
that  they  floated  his  boat  and  settled  into  peace  under 
his  word.  Nay,  if  we  could  find  it,  even  the  rock  of 
the  mountain  that  supported  his  head  in  the  sleep  of 
his  solitary  night,  would  have  itself  a  sacred  power 
from  his  person.  Why  not  then  the  law,  that  which 
he  had  with  him  before  the  world  was,  that  which  he 
taught  so  convincingly,  that  which  he  fulfilled  by  so 
many  exhaustive  labors,  and  by  sorrowing  even  unto 
death? 

Grant  that  here  is  no   contrived   compensation   to 


CHAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  317 

law,  is  it  any  the  less  truly  compensated,  any  the  less 
sacred,  and  honorable,  and  powerful  on  a  lost  world's 
feeling,  that  he  has  glorified  it  forever  in  their  sight  by 
his  simple  obedience  ?  Whatever  we  may  say  or  think 
of  the  matter  of  judicial  compensation,  as  a  purpose  to 
be  answered  by  his  death,  he  could  not  be  ignorant 
that  the  highest  possible  honor  would  be  imparted  to 
the  law  by  his  obedience  to  it ;  still  it  does  not  appear 
that  even  this  was  any  principal  end  of  his  engage- 
ment. His  principal  end  was  in  the  sacrifice  itself; 
viz.,  in  the  fulfilling  and  bringing  forth  of  God's  love 
to  men,  and  the  organizing  of  God's  kingdom  among 
them,  by  his  glorious,  world-transforming  power.  In 
this  he  did  not  fail,  and  it  is  only  affirming  a  very 
subordinate  matter,  to  say  that  his  power,  which  came 
out  of  the  law,  came  back  also  upon  it,  and  made  it  a 
greater  power  than  either  the  obedience,  or  the  punish- 
ment of  all  past  ages  could. 

As  regards  the  degree  of  honor  thus  conferred  by 
his  obedience  on  the  law,  two  points  need  especially  to 
be  observed.  First,  that  the  law  ful- 

.,„,,,.       .        .          ,  ,       .    .  .  The    very    law 

filled  by  his  vicarious  love  and  ministry,  dishonored  organ- 
was  exactly  the  same  that  our  sin  had  izes  the  «aemp- 

J  tion. 

cast  off  and  desecrated — this  it  was 
that  put  the  lost  world  upon  his  feeling,  proved  its 
goodness  in  his  goodness,  shaped  the  beauty  of  his 
beauty,  travailed  for  us  in  his  agony,  and  held  him  to 
the  obedience  even  unto  death.  So  the  violated  law 
comes  back  upon  us  to  overwhelm  us,  by  showing  us, 
in  Christ,  just  what  goodness  was  in  it.  Secondly  that, 

27* 


318  THE    LAW    PKECEPT  PART  IIL 

in  this  suffering  and  sacrifice  of  Jesus,  there  was  noth- 
ing new,  but  only  a  new  revelation  of  that  which  was 
old  as  the  perfections  of  God.  As  a  new  waking  up  of 
feeling  in  deity,  always  before  impassible,  it  would  be  a 
fact  too  violent  for  belief.  Contrary  to  this,  it  is  but 
the  letting  out  of  God's  feeling,  that  could  get  no  such 
sufficient  vent  of  evidence  before.  This  same  agony 
and  passion  heaved  in  the  breast  of  God's  virtue,  even 
from  before  the  world's  foundations.  God  was  suffer- 
ing in  feeling  for  the  ages  to  be,  even  before  the  evil 
was.  In  his  counsel  of  creation  he  could  not  think  of 
wrong,  and  disorder,  and  pain  breaking  loose,  without 
being  exercised  for  it  according  to  its  nature.  There 
was  a  losing  side  of  pain,  in  his  goodness,  just  because  it 
was  good ;  only  the  loss  was  never  a  true  loss,  because 
it  was  eternally  repaid  by  the  willingness  to  lose  for 
love's  sake.  The  Gethsemane  of  his  compassions  kept 
company  with  his  joys,  and  the  conscious  goodness  of 
one  was  high  enough  to  exalt  the  conscious  bliss  of  the 
other.  All  this  now  appears,  in  the  specially  human 
facts  of  Christ  and  his  passion.  The  law  that  was  be- 
ing thus  sublimely  fulfilled,  in  God's  suffering  love 
from  eternity,  is  only  now  fulfilled  to  human  view,  by 
the  suffering  ministry  of  Jesus.  No  such  revelation 
was  made,  or  could  be,  in  the  field  of  nature  before. 
Scantily  and  feebly  was  it  made,  so  as  to  just  glimmer 
and  nothing  more,  in  the  word  of  the  ancient  prophets, 
and  the  guesses  of  the  ancient  saints.  Now  it  is  out  in 
the  full,  revealed  in  time — God  is  in  the  world  in  love, 
fulfilling  his  eternal  law  Himself,  for  the  saving  of  its 
rejectors. 


CHAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  3l9 

But  there  are  two  objections  to  be  noticed.  The  first 
is  that  which  is  actually,  yet  accidentally,  stated  by  Mr. 
Burge,  without  any  conception  of  its  objected  that 
applicability  to  the  case  here  occurring,  the  obedience  was 
He  says  *— "  In  his  divine  nature,  there-  nothing  new* 
fore,  he  could  not  have  rendered  precisely  that  obedi- 
ence which  man  failed  to  render.  Neither  can  it  be 
supposed  that  in  his  divine  nature,  when  he  was  incar- 
nate, he  obeyed  the  divine  law,  in  any  sense  different 
from  that  in  which  God  obeyed  it  from  eternity.  It  is 
not  seen,  therefore,  how  Christ's  obedience  to  the  law 
could  manifest  God's  regard  for  holiness,  on  account  of 
his  union  of  the  divine  and  human  natures,  any  more 
than  if  no  such  union  had  existed."  Most  true  it  is 
that  he  did  not  obey  the  law  in  any  sense  different 
from  that  in  which  God  had  obeyed  it  from  eternity. 
But  the  inference  that  nothing  is  shown  by  his  obedi- 
ence, more  than  was  shown  by  the  eternal  obedience,  is 
just  as  good  as  it  would  be  to  argue  that,  manifesting 
nothing  of  God's  love  in  his  death,  more  than  was  in 
God's  love  before,  it  is  therefore  nugatory.  The  glory 
of  his  incarnate  mission  is  precisely  this,  and  in  this  is 
the  gain  of  it,  that  he  unbosoms,  in  time,  what  love 
and  obedience  to  law  were  hid  in  God's  unseen  majesty, 
or  but  dirnly  and  feebly  shown  before. 

The  second  objection  referred  to  is  that  in  such  use 
of  the  obedience  of  Christ,  conceived  to  be  a  simple 
fulfillment  of  his  obligation,  we  get  no  surplus  merit  to 
be  our  righteousness.  By  a  very  strange,  almost  in- 

*  Discourses  and  Treatises  by  Dr.  Park,  p.  476. 


320  THE    LAW    PRECEPT  PART  III. 

credible  mock  "refinement,  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  is  dis- 
sected by  the  prominent  satisfaction  theories,  just  be- 
Objccted  that,   tween  the  passive  and  the  active,  the  suf- 
in  such  use  of  fering  and  the  obedience ;    the  suffering 

the  obedience,  no  .... 

surplus  merit  is  being  put  to  our  account  -with  justice  and 
left  for  us.  called  our  atonement,  and  the  obedience 

taken  as  a  positive  fulfillment  of  the  law,  and  assigned 
to  us  for  a  righteousness.  I  can  hardly  trust  myself  to 
speak  of  this  wretched  imposture  of  science,  falsely  so 
called,  as  it  deserves.  It  is  a  halving,  as  it  were,  of 
Christ  and  his  sacrifice,  that  makes  both  halves  alike  of 
non  effect.  Of  what  worth  is  the  suffering,  taken  as 
mere  suffering,  with  no  obedience  or  moral  quality  in 
it  ?  Of  what  worth,  too,  is  the  obedience,  considered  as 
having  suffered  nothing,  proved  itself  by  nothing,  and 
even  missed  the  prime  attribute  of  reality?  Is  God  a 
being  who  wants  suffering  by  itself,  and  will  have  it 
from  no  matter  whom  ?  Is  he  a  being  who  can  make 
a  righteousness  for  us  quantitatively  out  of  another's 
obedience,  and  be  himself  pleased  with  the  impossible 
fiction  ?  O  how  different  a  matter  is  the  sublime  obe- 
dience of  Jesus — obedience  unto  death,  death  as  the 
seal  of  obedience — covering  the  law  thus  with  its  origi- 
nal honor  and  breathing  God's  everlasting  love  into  our 
fallen  desecrated  nature!  This  is  gospel — possible 
truth,  and  good  enough  and  great  enough  to  be  true. 
Whoever  turns  it,  therefore,  into  wood  and  hay  may  be 
ingenious,  but  he  will  have  scarcely  less  to  answer  for 
in  his  doctrine,  I  seriously  fear,  than  others  have  in 
their  sin. 


CHAP.  IV.  DULY    SANCTIFIED.  321 

Eeviewing  now  the  ground  over  which  we  have 
passed,  I  think  it  will  be  seen  that  Christ  has  set  the 
law  precept  in  a  position  of  great  honor  and  power, 
enduing  it  with  such  life  and  majesty,  in  men's  con- 
victions, as  it  otherwise  never  could  have  had.  (1.)  He 
proposes,  we  have  seen,  no  remission  of  sins  which  does 
not  include  a  full  recovery  to  the  law.  (2.)  All  that  he 
does  and  suffers  in  his  sacrifice,  he  as  truly  does  for  the 
resanctification  of  the  law  as  for  our  recovery.  (3.)  In 
his  incarnation,  he  incarnates  the  same,  and  brings  it 
nigh  to  men's  feelings  and  convictions,  by  the  personal 
footing  he  gains  for  it  in  humanity.  (4.)  He  honors  it 
again  by  his  obedience,  which  is,  in  fact,  a  revelation 
of  God's  own  everlasting  obedience,  before  the  eyes  of 
mankind;  the  grandest  fact  of  human  knowledge. 
\Vith  great  confidence  then  I  state  the  conclusion,  that 
the  law  precept  is  safe,  established  in  power,  crowned 
with  invincible  honor.  Whatever  may  be  thought, 
or  apprehended,  in  respect  to  the  possible  damage  ac- 
crifing  to  God's  law,  as  regards  the  matter  of  enforce- 
ment, when  the  remission  of  penalty  is  proclaimed, 
there  can  be  no  misgiving,  in  respect  to  the  integrity 
and  sanctity  of  the  requirement.  Whether  there  is 
any  proper  ground  of  concern  for  the  loss  of  the  penal 
enforcements,  will  be  considered  in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  V. 

LEGAL  ENFORCEMENTS    NOT  DIMINISHED. 

THE  common  assumption,  that  law  is  absurd  or  im- 
possible without  penal  enforcements,  is  not  quite  true, 

°r  *S  °n       trUG  *n  a     ^ven  case  or 


Le  al    enal   en- 

fbrcements  neces-  tion.     God   himself  acknowledges   law 

Bary  for  bad  minds. 


no  sanction  over  and  above  its  own  excellence.  All  up- 
right beings  do  the  same.  Indeed  a  law  propounded 
with  a  penalty,  to  a  realm  in  perfect  holiness,  would 
even  be  an  impropriety,  or  blamable  offense  to  their 
feeling.  Not  so,  when  propounded  to  minds  no  longer 
capable  of  being  swayed  by  the  authority  of  beauty 
and  excellence  in  their  own  right.  For  it  is  the  misery 
and  shame  of  bad  minds  under  sin,  that  excellence 
and  beauty,  powerful  as  they  still  are  over  the  senti- 
ments of  their  higher  nature  not  yet  extirpated,  are  no 
longer  sufficient,  by  themselves,  to  recover  and  restore 
the  broken  homage  of  their  fall.  They  move  on  a 
point,  too  far  above  the  plane  of  motivity  occupied  by 
sin,  to  control  and  subdue  it.  They  are  likely  indeed, 
when  embodied  in  Christ,  to  be  felt  more  as  a  disturb- 
ance, than  as  an  attraction.  What  is  wanted  there- 
fore, in  connection  with  his  new  salvation,  is  some 


CHAP.  V.        LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS,     ETC.  323 

John  the  Baptist  going  before,  to  prepare  his  way.  The 
new  moral  power  wants  a  force-power  to  precede; 
something  which  meets  the  selfishness  of  sin  in  its  own 
plane,  making  the  appeal,  at  first,  to  interest  or  pre- 
cautionary prudence,  by  intimidations  and  appeals  to 
fear.  To  have  approving  sentiments  raised  for  law  in 
the  bosom  of  transgression,  and  so  to  have  it  kept  in 
reverence,  is  highly  important,  or  even  necessary,  but 
there  is  wanted,  beside,  a  more  rugged  sort  of  argu- 
ment, that  of  strong  penal  enforcements  ;  such  as  may 
cut  off  delays,  stop  the  idle  debates  of  the  head,  and 
raise  a  point-blank  issue  with  pride  and  willfulness  that, 
being  an  issue  of  peril,  can  not  be  parried. 

To  be  more  exact,  we  have  proposed  for  us,  at  this 
point,  two  distinct  schemes  of  motivity,  neither  of 
which  is  properly  and  fully  Christian  ;  first  the  scheme 
that  makes  nothing  of  fear,  and  the  lower  motives  ad- 
dressed to  prudence,  counting  wholly  on  such  as  lie  in 
the  ideal  goodness  and  beauty  of  holiness  itself;  and 
secondly  the  scheme  which,  finding  natural  causes  ar- 
ranged for  the  penal  chastisement  of  wrong,  counts  the 
arrangement  a  complete  moral  government  in  itself, 
beside  which  no  other  is  wanted,  or  in  fact  exists. 

The  former  scheme  assumes  that  goodness  and  right 
are  their  own  argument,  able  to  rule  by  their  own 
simple  excellence.  What  is  good  for 

.  False  agsump- 

angels  in  their  height  of  virtue,  is  de-   tion  that 


clared  to  be  good  also  for  men  in  their   ness  is  govern- 

ment enough. 
sin.     At  any  rate,  as  the  argument  goes, 

nothing  less,  or  lower,    is  permissible  any  where  ;  for 


324  'LEGAL  ENFORCEMENTS          PABTIII. 

what  kind  of  excellence,  or  virtue  is  that,  which  is 
goaded  by  the  impulsions  of  fear  and  threatened  force  ? 
If  any  such  thing  is  thought  of,  in  this  scheme,  as 
conversion,  the  assumption  is  that  evil  will  let  go  evil, 
and  turn  itself  to  good,  simply  for  goodness'  sake, 
without  any  thought  or  motive  njet  in  its  own  plane 
to  dislodge  it.  Christ  is  more  practical,  and  just  as 
much  more  rational.  He  does  not  look  on  the  world 
as  being  in  a  state  to  be  converted  romantically,  as  by 
the  mere  attractions  of  goodness  and  beauty.  A  be- 
gining  is  to  be  made,  he  clearly  sees,  with  sin,  at  its 
own  level ;  the  level  of  guilty  apprehension,  fear,  self- 
ishly interested  forecast  of  the  future.  His  first  thought 
is  to  block  the  way  of  transgression,  by  warnings  and 
appeals  of  terror.  Setting  the  gate  of  God's  mercy 
and  truth  wide  open,  he  does  not  expect  the  trans- 
gressors to  enter,  just  because  he  sits  there,  in  the  lovely 
charms  of  goodness.  He  expects  them  to  come  in, 
only  as  he  compels  them  to  come  in;  sending  out 
the  rugged  sheriffalty  of  law  and  penal  enforcement,  to 
grapple  them,  as  it  were,  by  the  shoulder.  It  is  noth- 
ing to  him  that  the  first  motives  felt,  in  such  a  case,  are 
too  low  for  any  state  of  virtue.  Enough  that,  by 
guiltiness,  want,  fear,  interested  feeling,  struggling  with 
the  dreadful  and  appalling  problems  of  life,  he  is  able 
to  get  them  arrested  in  evil,  and  that,  when  the  arrest  is 
made,  consideration  begun,  willfulness  broken,  the 
nobler  motives  of  admiring  sentiment — love,  beauty, 
sacrifice — may  come  into  play,  and  work  their  captiva- 
ting spells  of  goodness  on  the  heart's  devotion.  No 


CHAP.  V.  XOT    DIMINISHED.  325 


delicate  philosophy  detains  him  ;  if  the  lower  motives 
appealed  to  are  not  fine  enough  for  goodness,  they  are, 
at  least,  coarse  enough  for  badness  —  -just  the  fit  evils  to 
put  in  the  way  of  evil,  just  the  arguments  it  is  able  to 
feel,  when  it  can  be  reached  by  nothing  else.  And*so. 
by  this  very  practical  regimen,  he  is  able  to  balk  the 
progress  of  transgression,  turn  back  the  soul  on  thought- 
fulness,  so  on  repentance,  so  on  the  love  of  goodness 
and  excellence  for  their  own  sake.  And  this  to  him 
more  emphatically  than  to  any  other  teacher  of  the 
world,  is  the  only  real  state  of  virtue  —  dear  to  him 
specially  in  the  fact,  that,  in  being  perfected  as  love,  it 
casteth  out  the  fear,  in  whose  guilty  intimidations  it 
found  the  opportunity  and  date  of  its  own  beginning. 

Thus  it  is  that  Christ,  recognizing  the  fears  as  an 
original  and  profoundly  rational  function  of  souls,  makes 
no  scruple  of  appeal  to  them,  even  when  his  object  is  to 
consummate  a  character  wholly  superior  to  their  active 
sway.  He  believes,  we  shall  see,  in  strong  penal  en- 
forcements, and  puts  them  forward,  clear  of  all  delicate 
misgiving,  to  be  the  advance  guard  of  his  mercies. 

The  second  scheme  referred  to  holds  a  humbler  key  ; 
it  is  wholly  in  the  plane  of  prudence  and  natural  retri- 
bution ;  delighting  in  the  discovery  that, 

*  False  assump- 

accordmg  to  the  original  outfit  of  life,   tionthatretribu- 

the  moral  law,  or  law  of  responsible  con-   tion  is  govern- 

ment enough. 
duct,  has  a  whole  system  or  economy  of 

causes  put  in  company  with  it,  to  be  its  avengers  and 
redress  its  violations.  And  this,  it  is  conceived,  is  the 
complete  account,  or  whole,  of  God's  moral  govern- 

28 


326  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

merit.  What  we  call  punishment  is  the  natural  cor- 
rection of  our  evils.  Every  sin,  they  say,  is  sure  to  be 
overtaken  by  its  penalty;  no  trial,  or  judge,  or  judg- 
ment-seat, is  wanted,  the  culprit  carries  his  own  hells 
of  punishment  with  him,  and  every  transgression  kin- 
dles its  own  fires.  And  so  it  is  conceived  that  motives 
of  fear,  prudence,  and  actual  suffering,  are  the  only 
arguments  of  virtue ;  which,  of  course  never  rises  above 
the  control  of  such,  and  really  wants  no  other.  Salva- 
tion itself,  if  we  are  to  use  the  term,  consists  in  simply 
backing  out  of  our  wrongs,  because  we  are  scorched  by 
justice,  or  will  be,  in  them.  Saying  nothing  of  the 
very  ignoble  and  mean  quality  of  such  virtue,  it  is  plain 
as  it  need  be,  that  such  kind  of  enforcement  by  natural 
causes,  taken  by  itself,  and  not  as  a  base  for  the  work- 
ing of  higher  motives,  makes  inevitably  the  most 
hopeless,  helpless,  least  enforced,  scheme  of  duty  that 
can  be  conceived.  The  result  of  such  a  scheme  is  not 
any  state  of  virtue,  but  a  state  of  natural  punition  that 
is,  without  a  peradventure,  endless.  For  the  penal 
causations  take  away,  at  once,  the  powers  so  to  speak 
of  obedience.  When  the  soul  breaks  into  sin,  the  laws 
of  retribution  begin  forthwith  to  punish  it,  by  throes 
of  internal  disorder,  which  no  power  of  the  will  can 
stop.  It  is  shaken  out  equilibrium,  out  of  the  full  nat- 
ural possession  of  itself,  out  of  its  constitutional  har- 
mony, by  the  terrible  recoil  of  its  transgression.  The 
passions,  fears,  convictions,  sentiments,  imaginations, 
are  all  set  loose  in  a  quarrel  with  each  other,  and  the 
will  can  neither  recompose  the  state  of  harmony,  nor 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  327 

the  mind  itself  accurately  conceive  the  internal  re- 
adjustments necessary  to  such  harmony.  The  trans- 
gressor could  as  easily  regather  his  money  sown  upon 
the  Gulf  Stream,  as  gather  himself  back  out  of  the 
penal  causations  in  which  he  is  sweltering.  The  penal 
disorders  and  breakages  will  propagate,  indirectly,  other 
disorders  and  breakages,  and  the  motions  of  life  itself 
will  be  only  "the  motions  of  sins,"  propagating  more 
sins.  Even  as  a  broken  engine  can  not  mend  itself  by 
running,  but  will  only  thresh  itself  into  a  more  com- 
plete wreck.  Setting  his  will  to  obey,  as  being  now 
corrected  by  suffering — and  he  can  do  nothing  more — 
his  will  can  as  little  tame  the  soul's  wild  turbulences,  or 
quiet  the  mob  of  its  internal  commotions,  as  it  could 
the  public  anarchy  of  an  empire.  The  exact  difficulty 
now  is,  in  fact,  that  the  natural  retributions  are  stronger 
as  disabilities,  than  as  motives,  and  are  therefore  no  en- 
forcement at  all. 

Now  it  is  the  merit,  I  conceive,  of  Christianity,  that, 
of  these  two  schemes  of  motivity,  it  holds  exactly 
neither ;  or  perhaps  I  should  rather  say  Christ  com- 
that  it  comprises  both  together;  viz.,  a  bines  both  kind* 
standard  of  divine  excellence  and  beauty, 
drawing  men  to  goodness  by  the  moral  attractions  of 
goodness  itself;  and  a  grand  economy  of  penal  causa- 
tions in  nature,  by  which  evil  done  is  confronted  with 
evil  to  be  suffered,  and  is  thus  forced  back,  on  the 
consideration  of  that  blessed  authority  which  ought  to 
be  loved  for  its  own  excellence.  Only  it  is  a  matter  of 
the  highest  consequence  to  add  that,  in  comprising  these 


328  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

two  elements,  Christianity  holds  them  both  with  im- 
portant additions,  or  variations,  necessary  to  their 
effectiveness. 

First,  that  the  moral  power  of  good,  as  expressed  by 

the  law,  is  to  get  an  accession  of  moral  power,  in  Christ, 

beyond  that  which  naturally  belongs  to 

First,    by   his    .     '       .  0       .      .  , 

moral  power,  he  **  as  impersonal  precept ;  for  it  is  to  be 
re-enforces  the  glorified  and  raised  in  power,  by  the  mir- 
acle of  the  incarnation,  and  the  sacrifice 
and  supernatural  ministry  of  Jesus.  The  moral  power 
it  gets  in  this  way  is  to  be  itself  a  kind  of  supernatural 
person,  invested  with  such  life  and  feeling,  by  the 
methods  of  the  cross,  that,  entering  into  natures  disor- 
dered and  broken  by  the  penal  retributions  of  sin,  it 
may  recompose  them  in  heaven's  order  and  harmony ; 
so  to  be  a  true  redemption.  For  it  will  redeem,  in  this 
manner,  from  the  natural  laws  and  causations  arranged 
to  serve  as  enforcements,  and  prevent  these  enforce- 
ments from  issuing  in  results  of  eternal  disability ;  as 
they  otherwise  would,  in  the  manner  just  now  stated. 
They  were  never  intended,  as  retributions,  to  maintain  a 
mere  scheme  of  obedience  by  force — which  is  no  obedi- 
ence at  all — but  to  work  in  with  and  toward  this  other 
and  higher  power,  that  is  relatively  supernatural,  and 
brings  the  soul  up  finally  out  of  their  compulsions  into 
a  complete  liberty  in  good. 

Secondly,  this  being  true,  Christianity  is  able  to  press 
the  enforcements  on  that  side,  with  the  greatest  empha- 
sis, and  even  to  increase  the  responsibilities  enforced. 
Taken  as  a  scheme  of  retributive  causations  in  nature, 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  329 

they  sleep,  as  it  were,  in  silence,  to  be  discovered  only 
as  they  are  provoked.  But  Christianity  brings  them 
all  out,  in  the  bold  announcement  of 

.  A          1  11  ^n(^  S°  *8    a^G 

them  by  a  doctrine.  And  to  make  them  to  enforce  it  by 
felt,  it  puts  them  forward  in  the  shape  of  stronger  penal- 

.  .  ,  ,    ties. 

positive  enactments,  to  be  executed 
against  the  transgressors,  by  a  positive  judicial  sen- 
tence. Furthermore  it  makes  the  rejection  of  Christ, 
and  the  supernatural  grace  prepared  by  him,  a  great 
part  of  the  sin  to  be  answered  for— just  as  it  must  be, 
in  fact,  regarding  natural  causes  as  the  sole  agents  of 
retribution ;  for  the  greater  advantages,  and  helps,  and 
revelations  of  goodness  and  beauty,  sin  rejects,  the 
greater  will  be  its  criminality  and  the  deeper  hold  of  it 
the  fires  of  natural  retribution  will,  of  course,  take.  In 
this  manner  Christianity  presses  enforcements  up  to 
their  limit,  placing  its  own  great  mercies  and  captiva- 
ting charms  of  good  always  along  side  of  them,  and  al- 
lowing itself  never  to  be  detained  by  any  delicate  mis- 
givings of  philanthropy. 

For  there  is  no  hardship  now  in  severity ;  the  hardest 
and  sorest  defect  is  really  in  the  want  of  it.  Taken  by 
themselves,  the  penal  sanctions  of  nature  would  be  only 
a  ministry  of  condemnation ;  they  would  kill  and  noth- 
ing more ;  now  they  condemn  and  slay  to  make  ready 
for  life ;  lifting  their  ominous  flag  of  warning  on  the 
shoals  of  future  wreck,  to  beckon  the  transgressor  back 
on  a  revised  consideration  of  his  courses.  Would  it  be 
a  kindness  if  this  flag  were  taken  down  ? 


330  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

It  has  been  convenient,  thus  far,  to  speak  of  penal 
enforcements  simply  as  compelling  motives,  or  as  warn- 
ings and  intimidations  addressed  to  pru- 
morai  power  of  dential  consideration.     But  they  have  a 
judicial   seven-   much  deeper  and  more  nearly  basal  of- 

ties 

fice,  which  is  commonly  not  observed. 
They  have  even  a  certain  moral  power  in  themselves, 
which  is  of  a  wholly  different  cast  from  that  of  Christ  in 
the  sacrifice,  but  which  he  contrives  to  unite  with  his 
own,  by  the  sturdy  severities  of  his  doctrine.  In  our 
discussions,  for  example,  of  punishments  in  the  civil 
state,  and  particularly  of  capital  punishments,  it  ap- 
pears to  be  taken  for  granted,  that  these  two,  the  intim- 
idation of  crime,  and  the  reclamation  of  the  criminals 
themselves,  are  the  only  objects  of  penalty.  Whereas 
the  grandest,  and  most  real,  and  deep-working  office  of 
punishment  is  the  fearfully  sharp  sense  it  wakens  of 
crime  itself,  by  such  tremendous  severities  or  thunder- 
claps of  extermination — wherein  even  the  good,  protec- 
tive law  can  so  utter  itself  and  must,  against  the 
deeds  of  wrong  that  shake  society.  The  moral  con- 
viction roused  is  the  main  benefit — that  sensibility  to 
order,  and  law,  and  right,  that  runs  quivering  through 
the  bosom  of  all  citizens,  when  the  almost  sacrilegious 
violence  of  justice  turns  upon  the  felon's  life,  com- 
manding the  scaffold  and  the  rope  to  stop  his  breath ! 
And  precisely  in  the  same  way  it  is  to  be  conceived, 
that  strong  and  terrible  retributions,  not  only  serve  as 
motive  powers  of  interest  in  the  government  of  souls, 
but  have  another  and  weightier  office,  in  creating  moral 


CIIAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  331 

sensibility,  or  setting  in  moral  conviction,  as  regards  the 
sanctity  of  law  and  the  dreadful  criminality  of  sin. 
Without  this,  no  visitation  of  mere  gentleness  and  suf- 
fering sacrifice  will  make  a  salvation  that  has  the  true 
efficacy.  The  very  subsoil  of  guilt  requires  to  be  stir- 
red by  God's  terrors.  They  must  not  simply  skim  the 
surfaces  of  fear,  but  strike  through  into  the  deep  under- 
work of  moral  conviction  itself.  All  the  better  too,  if 
we  behold  the  terrible  thunder-strokes  of  Providential 
severity  falling  on  the  head  of  whole  communities,  or 
nations,  or  specially  on  the  head  of  the  most  deserving 
peoples ;  because  it  visibly  is  now,  not  sins,  but  sin,  not 
any  special  crimes,  but  the  comprehensive  criminality 
of  a  state  unrelational  with  God,  that  requires  or  insti- 
gates so  great  severity.  Hence,  the  great  common  woes 
that  fall  on  whole  peoples,  in  what  are  called  the  sever- 
ities of  nature — the  storms,  fires,  earthquakes,  pesti- 
lences, famines,  wrecks,  orphanages  of  the- world — the 
unspeakably  appalling  facts  are  known,  and  they  have 
no  other  solution  that  is  either  satisfactory  or  tolerably 
sufficient.  The  language  of  Christ,  applying  all  such 
things  to  the  common  guilt  of  mankind,  shows  in  what 
manner  they  were  understood  by  him.  "  Suppose  ye 
that  these  Galileeans  were  sinners  above  all  the  Galilee- 
ans,  because  they  suffer  such  things?  or  those  eight- 
een, upon  whom  the  tower  of  Siloam  fell  and  slew 
them,  think  ye  that  they  were  sinners  above  all  men 
that  dwelt  in  Jerusalem?  I  tell  you  nay,  but  except 
ye  repent  ye  shall  all  likewise  perish." 

It  appears  then  that  Christ,  coming  to  us  in  his  sacri- 


332  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

fice,  to  unbosom  the  love  of  God,  and  publish  the  free 

forgiveness  of  sins,  is  fully  awake,  nevertheless,  to  the 

sacred  necessity  of  maintaining  law  by 

Christ    there-       _  f  ,     .   °   ,. 

fore  denounces  adequate  enforcements,  and  ploughing  up 
eternal  punish-  moral  conviction  by  great  Providential 
sumes  the  judg-  an(l  judicial  severities.  Only  the  more  fit 
ment  of  the  subject  of  wonder  is  it,  therefore,  that  so 
many  teachers  are  disturbed  by  their  very 
unnecessary  concern  for  what  they  call  the  law ;  imag- 
ining that  a  free  remission  may  somehow  kill  the  law, 
and  contriving  even  schemes  of  punition  for  the  Son  of 
God  himself,  that  they  may  save  it !  As  if  the  super- 
natural grace  he  brings,  to  rescue  from  the  penal  retri- 
butions of  God,  were  quite  taking  away  the  enforce- 
ments; which  it,  in  fact,  only  makes  effective.  Most 
strange  it  is  that,  when  they  are  going  every  way  to 
bring  counsel  from  afar  for  the  saving  of  law,  they  can 
yet  see  nothing  in  two  such  facts  as  these — continually 
reiterated  by  Christ  himself — facts  almost  as  new  and 
distinctive  even  as  the  forgiveness  of  sins  by  his  cross ; 
(1.)  eternal  punishment;  (2.)  the  judgment  of  the 
world  by  himself.  Publishing  announcements  like 
these,  and  making  even  love  to  thunder,  in  motives  so 
appalling,  is  it  to  be  feared  that  Christ  is  letting  down 
authority,  and  obliterating  the  fixed  lines  of  duty,  by 
some  unguarded  license  of  mercy?  Why  the  law 
never  before  got  itself  really  uttered,  and  the  grand 
awards  of  the  future  life  never  showed  their  true  figure 
of  majesty,  till  they  were  revealed  in  this  fearful  way 
of  emphasis  by  Christ  himself.  Accordingly,  to  these 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  333 


two  very  remarkable  points  in  the  public  teaching  of 
Christ,  considered  as  related  to  the  enforcement  of  law, 
I  now  invite  the  reader's  particular  attention.  And  — 

I.  To  the  specially  Christian  declaration  of  future 
punishment,  sometimes  called  eternal,  or  endless  pun- 
ishment. 

I  am  well  aware  of  the  disappointment  I  may  inflict 
on  certain  progressives,  or  disciples  of  the  new  gospel, 
that,  in  so  free  a  handling  of  what  is  held  by  authority, 
I  still  give  in  to  a  doctrine  of  the  future  punishment 
that  is  so  revolting  to  reason,  and,  as  they  will  say,  to 
thoughtful  minds  already  so  nearly  outgrown.  If  they 
can  allow  any  reason  for  the  fact  that  does  not  imply  a 
subserviency  to  prudential  motives,  let  it  be  that  I  am 
thoroughly  fixed  in  the  purpose,  and  that  on  grounds 
of  reason,  never  to  make  a  gospel  —  either  to  have  no 
gospel  at  all,  or  else  to  accept  the  gospel  that  is  given 
me.  I  have  been  through  all  the  questions,  taken  all 
the  turns  of  doubt,  suffered  all  the  struggles  of  feeling 
in  respect  to  this  confessedly  hard  looking  doctrine  of 
future  punishment  ;  I  have  even  learned,  in  these  strug- 
gles, to  pity  the  meagerness  of  any  soul  that  has  en- 
countered no  troubles  and  painful  misgivings  concern- 
ing it.  Neither  is  this  pity  at  all  diminished  but  in- 
creased, rather,  by  the  fact,  that  I  am  brought  back 
finally  to  acquiesce  in  it  myself,  and  even  to  look  upon 
it  as  being  probably  a  necessary  factor  of  the  Christian 
salvation.  What  else  can  we  infer,  when  we  find,  as 
we  shall  by  a  little  search,  that  our  merciful  Christ,  he 


334  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  IIL 

that  comes  in  love,  and  saves  by  the  sacrifice  of  his  life, 
is  the  first  distinctly  responsible  promulgator  of  it 
himself? 

But,  before  proceeding  to  show  this  fact,  let  us  attend 
to  some  considerations  in  which  the  doctrine  may  be 
duly  qualified  and  cleared  of  the  severities,  by  which  it 
is  made  unnecessarily  shocking  to  many. 

We  could  well  enough  allow  that  the  epithet  u  eter- 
nal" [a/wv<os-]  need  not  mean  eternal,  in  the  exact, 

The  word « cter-  sPeculative  sense.  It  is  of  no  great 
nai"  not  very  ded-  consequence,  that  we  insist  on  it  as  a 
term  of  duration  logically  infinite. 
Enough  that  we  receive  it  practically,  as  giving  that 
finality  to  thought,  beyond  which  there  is,  for  us,  noth- 
ing to  be  meditated  farther.  It  is  very  true  that  the 
same  epithet  is  used  respecting  the  duration  both  of 
punishment  and  of  blessedness — "  These  shall  go  away 
into  everlasting  punishment,  and  the  righteous  into  life 
eternal" — but  it  is  surmised  by  some,  without  any 
great  violence,  that  as  we  get  only  the  slenderest  im- 
pressions any  way  of  the  state  of  suffering  called  eter- 
nal, the  intent  of  Christ  may  only  be  to  shove  our 
thought  over  on  that  sea,  and  let  us  get  the  measures 
of  it  by  our  long,  long  voyage  afterward;  that  the 
punishment  is  called  eternal  as  the  life,  because  it  is  the 
punishment  of  the  eternal  state,  and  is  best  appre- 
hended here,  when  taken  as  a  practical  finality  for  the 
mind. 

I  make  this  concession,  partly  because  I  have  no  care 
to  press  the  matter  so  far  as  to  make  a  bad  eternity 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  335 

hang  on  the  form  of  a  word,  and  partly  because  it  is 
sometimes  argued,  in  the  same  way,  that  as  the  capac- 
ity and  blessedness  of  the  life  are  to  be  forever  ampli- 
fied by  exercise,  so  also  are  the  capacity  and  woe  of  the 
punishment.  And  this  latter  is  almost  certainly  not 
true.  It  may  even  be  argued,  with  a  considerable 
show  of  evidence,  that  the  immortality  of  the  soul  does 
not  belong  to  its  mere  nature,  but  depends  rather  on 
the  eternally  imperishable  nature  of  that  on  which  it 
feeds — God,  truth,  duty,  self-sacrifice,  holiness — and 
that  when  it  only  knows  and  goes  after  the  phantoms 
of  condition,  or  of  mere  conventional  and  temporal 
good,  it  must  finally  die  out,  for  the  poverty  of  that 
soul-food  which  it  takes  for  its  life.  What  is  some- 
times called  the  doctrine  of  the  annihilation,  or  literal 
destruction,  of  the  wicked,  is  the  same  more  coarsely 
conceived.  A  good  many  passages  of  Scripture,  too,  are 
cited  for  it,  without  any  great  show  of  violence ;  and  a 
good  many  others,  with  only  that  common  kind  of  vio- 
lence which  consists  in  taking  literally  what  is  figura- 
tively given. 

Rejecting,  however,  this  annihilation  theory  as, 
plainly  enough,  not  being  the  doctrine  of  Scripture, 
we  still  do  observe,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Thc  ccrtain  n 
in  this  present  life,  that  souls  under  sin  auction  of  the  soul 
are  not  amplified  by  their  experience  in  *  8 
it,  as  they  are  by  their  experience '  in  good.  Gaining 
vigor,  it  may  be,  for  a  little  while,  they  finally  begin  to 
shrink  in  quantity,  losing  out  capacity  for  both  charac- 
ter and  the  higher  kinds  of  suffering ;  a  fact  in  which 


336  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

the  scheme  of  purgatorial  restorationism  loses  all  show 
of  evidence,  or  we  may  almost  say  of  possibility. 
Every  thing  we  see  of  sin,  in  the  world  of  fact,  shows 
it  to  be  a  desolating  extirpating  power  in  souls  ;  kill- 
ing out,  by  degrees,  even  the  faculties  and  possibilities 
of  religion,  and  reducing,  in  that  way,  all  the  hopes 
and  chances  of  restoration,  down  to  the  very  last  edge 
of  life.  Almost  any  thing,  therefore,  can  be  more  easily 
believed,  than  that,  dropping  off  that  edge,  with  but 
half  a  nature  left,  transgressors  are  there  to  be  con- 
verted and  finally  restored,  by  the  mere  smart  of  their 
pains  —  that  which  would  distract  their  love-impulse  if 
they  had  it,  and  can  not  do  much  to  restore  it  if  they 
have  it  not. 

But  while  this  diminution  of  quantity  in  souls  under 
sin  is  fatal,  as  it  certainly  is,  to  any  hope  of  purgatorial 

The  higher  Pow-  recoverJ>  &  does  not  g°  the  length  of 
ers    extinguished,  proving  their  extinction,  but  gives  ex- 

but  not  the  soul.  Qf 


least  exaggerated  and  truest  impression  of  the  Scripture 
view  of  punishment.  Thus  we  observe  that,  for  a  little 
while,  the  human  faculties  appear  to  be  invigorated  by 
the  struggles  of  passion,  or  selfish  ambition  ;  but  that 
shortly  they  begin  to  be  inevitably  wasted  in  quantity, 
narrowed  in  volume  and  capacity,  so  as  finally  to  pro- 
duce the  impression,  that  their  intensity  —  as  in  cun- 
ning, hatred,  envy,  policy,  and  avarice  —  is  getting  to 
be  a  kind  of  intensified  littleness  ;  a  fire  still  hot,  but 
running  low  in  fuel,  and  sure  to  be  as  much  less  con- 
siderable in  its  energy,  as  the  substantive  quantities  of 


CHAP.  V.  xoT    DIMINISHED.  887 


the  soul  are  more  diminished.  So  the  wasting  goes  on 
doubtless  hereafter  as  here,  and  the  penal  wear  of  bit- 
terness and  wrong  continues.  But  it  does  not  follow 
that  the  waste  will  operate  a  cessation  of  being,  because 
there  are  faculties  and  powers  not  wasted.  The  mem- 
ory is  as  faithful  a  recorder  of  what  is  bad,  as  it  could 
be  of  what  is  good.  The  conscience,  with  its  law  of 
right,  is  not  extirpated  any  more  than  the  sense  of  time 
or  space.  The  will  is  even  confirmed  by  habit  in  a 
state  of  unsubduable  capacity,  and  the  will  is  the  grand 
centralizing  element  of  personality  itself.  The  affini- 
ties for  what  is  bad  are  as  durable  as  they  would  be  in 
good.  The  progressive  diminution,  therefore,  is  never 
to  end  in  cessation,  but  may  well  be  figured  by  the 
asymptote  curve,  which,  as  the  mathematicians  will 
even  demonstrate,  has  the  remarkable  distinction  of  for- 
ever approaching  a  straight  line  even  by  a  fixed  law, 
yet  never  making  coincidence  with  it.  So,  probably 
enough,  it  may  be,  and  we  may  even  take  it  as  the  true 
conception,  that  souls  which  have  become  only  hacks 
of  punishment,  will  forever  continue  in  being,  spinning 
along  their  lengths  of  mediocrity,  intensified  in  points 
but  not  enlarged,  and  having  their  eternity  as  the  pro- 
tracted opportunity  of  their  moral  insignificance  and 
hopelessness.  Under  the  grand  organic  law,  that  fac- 
ulties not  used,  or  badly  misused,  are  finally  extirpated, 
their  religious  nature  is  likely  to  be  nearly,  or  quite 
gone  by.  All  the  Godward  summits  of  being  and 
thought  —  aspiration,  susceptibility  for  good,  the  sense  of 
moral  beauty,  the  power  of  realization  by  faith  —  are  de- 

29 


338  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

molished,  and  a  coarse,  hard  nature  only  remains,  grav- 
eled by  low  animosities,  without  great  sentiments,  and 
rising  never  into  any  look  of  altitude,  save  when  it  is 
raised  by  the  vehemence  of  its  passions.  Even  the  suf- 
fering that  is  left  is  that  of  a  nature  tapering  down  to  a 
diminished  grade  of  feeling,  or  abject  continuity  of  con- 
sciousness, that  is  only  the  more  desolate  that  it  can  not 
utterly  die. 

Holding  this  conception,  we  go  clear,  it  will  be  seen, 
of  that  very  shocking  extravagance,  which  maintains 

infinite  punish-   the    infinity     of    future    punishment. 

ment  denied.  Mere  infinity  of  duration  does  not 
make  the  quantity  infinite,  as  many  so  hastily  assume ; 
for,  if  there  be  a  diminution  of  degree  as  there  is  an  ex- 
tension of  time,  the  quantity  will  never  exceed  a  given 
amount.  So  too,  if  the  continuance  be  endless,  not  on 
the  score  of  old  sins  long  ago  committed — the  sins  of 
the  previous  lifetime — but  as  being  ordered  to  match, 
and  measure,  and  punish,  the  continuance  of  new  sins, 
freely  committed  and  persistently  adhered  to,  the  eter- 
nal punishment  so-called,  may  be  only  a  stream  of  tem- 
poral retributions,  appointed  to  match  the  stream  of 
eternally  recurring  transgressions.  As  regards  this 
matter  of  amount,  or  quantity,  we  can  really  have  no 
very  definite  conceptions ;  for  though  the  state  of  pun- 
ishment be  endless,  we  have  no  gauges  of  intensity  that 
we  can  apply,  and  do  not  even  know  how  far  the 
continuance  rests  on  the  continuance  of  transgression. 

At  the  same  time,  we  do  perfectly  know,  that  the  ar- 
guments often  used  to  show  that  the  punishment  of  sin 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  339 

ought  to  be,  and  therefore  must  be,  infinite,  are  ground- 
less— carried  by  a  practice  on  words  that  plays  them 
into  inferences  not  contained  in  their  meaning.  Thus 
it  is  argued  that  the  law  of  God  has  infinite  value, 
and  that  sin  therefore,  being  a  violation  of  it,  must  be 
an  infinite  evil,  worthy  of  an  infinite  punishment.  The 
constitution  of  our  government,  I  reply,  has  very  great 
value,  but  it  does  not  follow  that  any  particular  man's 
treason,  however  bold,  is  in  exactly  the  same  measure 
of  consequence.  The  physical  universe  is  infinite,  but 
it  does  not  follow  that  any  man's  infringement  of  its 
laws  is  an  infinite  infringement.  Sometimes  the  argu- 
ment is,  that  every  sin  heads  a  train  of  consequences 
that  is  endless,  and  is  therefore  infinite,  requiring  an 
infinite  punishment.  So  does  every  most  common,  or 
trivial  act,  bring  on  after  it  an  endless  train  of  conse- 
quences that  otherwise  would  not  have  happened ;  no 
man  goes  to  his  breakfast  without  this  result,  but  it  does 
not  follow  that  his  breakfast  was  infinite.  Sometimes 
the  argument  is,  that  since  the  law  of  God  is  the  best 
law  possible,  he  ought,  in  true  justice,  to  make  the  strong- 
est expression  of  attachment  to  it  that  is  possible ;  there- 
fore that  he  ought  to  inflict  the  strongest  possible  pun- 
ishment for  the  breach  of  it.  But  that  strongest  possible 
may  be  only  a  finite,  carefully  moderated  punishment; 
for  if  God  were  to  lay  his  omnipotence  into  the  severity 
of  it,  he  would  only  shock  the  sensibility  of  the  public 
world  addressed,  by  a  cruelty  visibly  monstrous,  and  the 
suffering  inflicted  would  have  no  expression  at  all  that 
belongs  to  punishment. 


340  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

The  sober  and  rational  fact,  then,  as  regards  the  mat- 
ter of  endless  punishment,  is,  that  it  is  a  finite  retribu- 

The    retribution   tion>  laid   UP0n   the   head   °f  finite   sin> 

finite  but  naturally  and  graduated  in  a  general  way  by  the 
endless.  demerit  of  it.  The  suffering  state 

which  it  produces  is  described  in  figures  that  raise  an 
impression  of  great  severity ;  and  there  is  no  reason  to 
believe  that,  take  them  as  we  may,  we  shall,  at  all,  ex- 
ceed the  just  realization  of  their  degree.  They  will 
profoundly  shock  us,  indeed,  if  we  take  them  literally, 
and  yet,  so  very  slow  are  we  to  imagine  a  condition  of 
unseen  spiritual  suffering,  that  we  shall  not,  even  then, 
raise  a  conception  of  the  real  misery  that  is  at  all  ade- 
quate. All  the  greater  and  more  reasonably  conceived 
misery  will  it  be,  if  we  make  no  doubt  that  God  is 
ready,  at  any  future  point  in  the  run  of  it,  to  embrace, 
in  everlasting  reconciliation,  any  truly  repenting  soul.  I 
say  not  any  regretful  soul,  but  any  soul  that  is  heartily 
turned  to  a  new  and  eternally  righteous  life.  For  this 
will  be  the  keen,  all-devouring  misery,  that,  with  so 
many  regrets,  there  is  so  little  repentance,  or  even 
power  of  it ;  that  the  nature,  now  but  half  a  nature, 
halting,  as  it  were,  on  its  clumsy  and  paralytic  mem- 
bers, finds  not  how  to  rise  any  more  forever.  Strong 
enough  to  suffer,  and  wicked  enough  to  sin,  the  ten- 
drils of  adhesion  to  God  are  dead,  and  it  can  not  fasten 
itself  practically  to  his  friendship.  Goodness  it  remem- 
bers but  can  not  sufficiently  feel.  All  its  struggles  are 
but  heavings  of  the  lower  nature — pains  of  defeat  that 
are  only  proving,  by  experiment,  their  own  perpetuity. 


CHAP.  V.  xoT    DIMINISHED.  341 


Assuming  all  these  qualifications  of  measure  and  de- 
gree, there  is  nothing  left  in  the  matter  of  endless  pun- 
ishment, by  which  we  can  fitly  be  disturbed,  except 
that  it  does  not  bring  out  the  kingdom  of  God,  in  that 
one  state  of  realized  unity,  and  complete  order,  which 
we  most  naturally  desire,  and  think  to  be  worthiest  of 
his  greatness  and  sovereignty.  It  certainly  would  be 
more  agreeable,  if  we  could  have  this  hope  ;  and  many 
are  resolved  to  have  it  without  Christ's  permission,  if 
they  can  not  have  it  with.  They  even  make  it  a  point 
of  merit,  to  seize  this  honor  bravely  for  God,  on  their 
own  responsibility,  and  for  it,  if  they  must,  defy  the 
Scripture.  I  think  otherwise,  and  could  even  count  it 
a  much  braver  thing,  to  willingly  be  less  brave,  and 
despite  of  our  natural  longings  for  some  issue  of  God's 
plan  that  is  different,  follow  still  the  lead  of  the  Master. 

We  come  back  now  from  this  rather  long  excursion, 
where  we  have  been  trying  to  settle  our  conceptions  of 
the  nature  of  the  future  punishment,  and  of  the  qualifi- 
cations that  may  save  it  from  a  look  of  excess,  to  con- 
sider the  relation  Christ  assumes  towards  it,  in  his  vica- 
rious sacrifice,  and  the  free  justification  of  sins.  Ob- 
serve then  — 

1.  That  while  he  undertakes,  in  this  manner,  a  uni- 
versal remission  of  sin,  or  even  to  freely  justify  every 
penitent  transgressor  before  God,  he  has  never  yet 
thought,  as  far  as  we  can  discover,  that  he  is  putting 
God's  law  and  justice  in  jeopardy,  or  raising  any  kind 
of  theologic  objection,  such  as  now  disturbs  the  con- 

29* 


342  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

cern  of  many.     He  does  not  even  appear  to  think  that 

he  is  here  on  any  exclusively  merciful  errand ;    for 

though  it  is  a  signal  distinction  of  his 

Christ  does  not    .  .    . 

even  imagine  that  incarnate  ministry,  that  he  reveals  the 
by   mercy  he   is  heart  of  Q^  arui  the  dear  cross  hid  in 

weakening  law.  •          i          i 

his  love  from  eternity,  he  does  not 
spare  to  reveal,  as  faithfully,  His  truth,  and  justice,  and 
authority,  and  righteousness,  and  all  that  is  required  to 
fill  out  the  majestic  proportions  of  His  character  and 
government.  He  begins,  thus,  with  the  declaration 
that  no  jot,  or  tittle  of  the  law  shall  fail ;  that  no  right- 
eousness of  scribe  or  pharisee  shall  be  enough;  and 
can  not  close  his  first  sermon,  without  promulgating, 
several  times  over,  the  appalling  doctrine  of  future 
punishment.  This  doctrine  is  quite  as  distinctively 
Christian  as  the  forgiveness  of  sins.  I  do  not,  of 
course,  imagine  that  the  fact  is  new,  but  the  doctrine  is. 
The  fact  was  in  the  law  of  natural  retribution  from  the 
first,  just  as  gravity  was  in  the  world  before  it  was  de- 
clared by  science;  for  the  penal  disorders,  once  begun, 
are  not  reducible  by  us,  and  the  trains  of  retributive 
causes  started  by  transgression  make  up  a  series  of  pro- 
pagations naturally  endless.  Besides,  as  we  just  now 
saw,  the  total  disuse  of  the  religious  nature  must,  in  a 
short  time,  extirpate  all  the  higher  powers  and  possi- 
bilities of  religion.  And  when  that  is  done,  when  the 
feasibility  of  the  soul  to  good  is  gone  by,  what  is  left 
but  a  state  of  incapacity  that  is  final  ? 

Christ,  then,  brought  forth  into  bold  assertion,  for 
the  first  time,  the  doctrine  of  eternal  punishment ;  not 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  343 

as  creating  the  fact,  but  only  as  declaring  that  which 
lies  in  the  simply  natural  causalites  of  retribution. 
Under  the  old  dispensation  the  pub-  C}irist  the  first 
lished  sanctions  of  law  were  temporal,  teacher  of  eternal 
or,  if  they  were  such  as  must  naturally  ] 
run  over  the  border  of  this  life  into  the  next,  they  were 
not  so  conceived  or  represented,  and  never,  in  fact,  got 
their  motive  power  in  being  so  recognized.  Indeed,  the 
future  life  itself  is  not  distinctly  conceived  as  a  fact  in 
the  early  Scriptures.  We  can  see  it  irresistibly  as- 
serted ourselves,  in  such  facts  as  the  translation  of 
Enoch  and  Elijah,  less  distinctly  in  the  visitations  of 
angels,  visibly  felt  but  unspoken  in  the  longings  of 
good  men ;  but  the  holiest  and  best  of  patriarchs  and 
wisest  of  teachers  still  said  nothing  of  it,  drew  no  mo- 
tives from  it  Farther  on,  expressions  begin  to  be 
dropped,  that  show  the  fact  struggling  into  formal  rec- 
ognition. And  yet  we  find  the  question  still  on  hand, 
between  the  Pharisees  and  the  Sadducees,  at  the  time 
of  Christ's  coming,  whether  there  is  any  such  fact  of  a 
second  existence  beyond  this  life — so  completely  tem- 
poral had  been  the  cast  of  God's  moral  government, 
practically,  down  to  this  time.  And  here  it  is  that 
Christ,  announced  by  John  as  coming  to  lay  the  axe  to 
the  root,  and  thoroughly  purge  his  floor,  and  burn  up  all 
the  chaffy  hypocrisies  of  a  mere  lifetime  sanctity,  with 
unquenchable  fire,  breaks  on  the  world  in  his  distinct, 
unflinching,  never  qualified,  oft  repeated,  variously 
conceived,  proclamation  of  eternal  punishment  His 
most  common  way  of  phrasing  the  doctrine  is  derived. 


344  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  1IJ: 

perhaps,  from  the  destruction  of  unclean  things  by  fire 
in  the  valley  of  Hinnom ;  or  perhaps  from  the  combus- 
tion of  bodies  there,  as  represented  in  the  last  chapter 
and  verse  of  Isaiah.  Under  this  figure,  and  others  va- 
riously related,  he  describes  again  and  again  the  outcast 
state  of  souls.  Sometimes  the  tokens  of  pain  that  are 
added  to  waken  apprehension,  though  of  course  not  lit- 
eral, are  such  as  produce  a  heavy  recoil  in  our  sensi- 
bility. All  the  punishments  of  the  Old  Testament, 
«ven  the  curses  of  Ebal,  are  as  dew  in  comparison. 
If  he  had  come  into  the  world  to  be  himself  the  Neme- 
sis of  transgression,  he  could  not  have  spoken  words 
more  appalling.  The  enforcement  power  was  never 
before  carried  so  far,  and  could  not,  even,  in  thought, 
be  carried  farther.  There  is  no  scruple  in  driving  the 
pressure  of  interested  motive  to  its  last  limit.  Fear 
could  quiver  in  the  dread  of  no  greater  loss.  And  this, 
it  will  be  noted,  from  Jesus,  the  Saviour  of  the  world ! 
he  that  is  incarnated  into  the  world's  curse,  and  dies  in 
his  suffering  ministry  for  it !  Observe  also — 

2.  That  Christ,  in  these  declarations  of  eternal  pun- 
ishment, never  betrays  one  symptom  of  doubt,  or  deli- 

.    cacy,  as  if  there  might  be  some  in  jus- 
Has  no  apparent          •* '  J 

scruple  in  the  doc-  tice,  or  over  severity  in  them,  such  as 
needs  to  be  carefully  qualified.  He 
plainly  enough  has  no  such  struggles  of  mind  on  the 
subject,  as  we  have.  His  most  delicate,  tenderly  sensi- 
tive humanity  gives  no  single  token  of  being,  either  of- 
fended, or  tried,  by  the  fact  of  so  great  severities.  It 
can  not  be  that  he  is  untroubled  by  questions  on  this 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED. 

subject  because  he  is  less  tender  of  rm 
God's  honor,  than  we  are,  or  because  he s\$r*$pf  fafify 
enough  on  in  the  world's  progress,  to  have  had  01 
great  theologic  problems  occur  to  him.  Perhaps  we 
shall  not  be  able  to  solve  this  strangely  unquestioning 
manner  of  his,  but  I  strongly  suspect  that  the  secret  of 
it  lies  in  the  fact,  that  he  has  a  way  of  conceiving  the 
matter  and  manner  of  eternal  punishment,  such  as 
leaves  our  modern  questions  out  of  sight,  and  does  not 
even  allow  them  to  occur.  Perhaps  he  only  thinks  of 
the  bad  man  as  going  on  to  eternity  in  his  badness,  and 
the  laws  of  retribution,  as  going  along  with  him,  to 
keep  his  voluntary  bad  deeds  company,  much  as  they 
do  here ;  regarding  the  malefactor  as  a  malefactor  still, 
and  suffering,  at  any  given  moment,  for  being  just 
what  he  is  at  that  moment — that  and  nothing  more. 
God  has,  in  fact,  put  nothing  of  his  pain  upon  him ;  he 
only  takes  it  on  himself,  and  there  is  really  no  more 
reason  to  be  troubled  about  the  severity  of  his  lot  than 
there  is  here  in  the  retributions  of  this  life. 

He  uses,  it  must  be  admitted,   the  most  appalling 
figures— "outer  darkness,"  "  great  gulf  fixed,"  "thirst," 
"torment,"  "wailing,"  "weeping,"  "a      His  appalling 
worm  that  dieth  not,"  "  a  fire  that  is  not          fieures- 
quenched" — but  he  has  no  misgiving;    probably  be- 
cause words  of  any  kind  are  so  impotent,  in  giving  the 
due  impression  of  any  state  unrealized,  and  need  to  be 
even    violently    overdrawn    to    answer    their    object. 
However  this  may  be,  it  is  quite  evident  that  the  tough 
questions  of  our  modern  philanthropism  have  either  not 


346  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

arrived,  or  are  quite  gone  by,  and  that  notwithstand- 
ing his  wonderfully  intense  love  for  mankind,  his  feel- 
ing still  goes  with  the  punitive  order  of  God's  retribu- 
tions, adding  even  heavier  emphasis  from  his  own  per- 
sonal indignations.  Again 

3.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  one  of  the  strongest 
evidences  of  the  strictly  superhuman  character  of 

Who  is  he  that  ^nr'st  ^s  contributed,  or  experimentally 
he  is  endured  in  brought  out,  by  the  singular  command 

such  teachings.          111 

he  has  over  such,  even  now,  as  passion- 
ately abjure  his  doctrine.  I  make  no  assumption  here 
that  goes  beyond  the  fact  of  their  abjuration  itself  and 
the  manner  of  it.  They  will  deny  that  he  asserted  any 
such  doctrine  of  punishment.  But  they  will  also  admit 
that  he  testified,  again  and  again,  in  all  most  varied 
and  most  pungent  words  of  warning,  to  what  sounds 
very  much  like  it,  and  which  being  qualified  by  no 
process  of  interpretation,  are  the  very  ipsissima  verba 
of  the  doctrine ;  that  he  was  the  first  decisive  teacher 
in  this  strain  ;  that  he  insisted  much  on  the  point  and 
often  recurred  to  it;  and,  whatever  else  may  be  true,  is 
the  practical  promulgator  and  first  founder,  in  that 
sense,  of  a  something  which  has  gotten  footing  as  the 
doctrine,  or  has  come  to  be  the  doctrine,  of  eternal  pun- 
ishment. Suppose  now  that  I  who  write  this  treatise — 
a  man  in  my  common  human  figure — had  done  ex- 
actly the  same  thing,  in  the  same  way  of  precedence, 
and  that,  making  many  speeches  on  religious  subjects, 
I  sprinkle  them,  all  through,  as  the  four  gospels  are 
sprinkled,  with  these  fiery  denunciations  of  punish- 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  347 

merit ;  how  many  living  men  of  the  whole  world,  if  I 
were  to  lead  off  in  such  a  doctrine,  would  hear  me  for 
one  moment  with  patience?  They  would  not  stop  to 
find  whether,  by  some  elaborate  and  careful  practice  on 
my  words,  they  could  sift  the  offensive  doctrine  out  of 
them.  Such  efforts  at  interpretation  would  themselves 
be  an  offense.  Nothing  but  contempt,  downright,  in- 
stant, unhesitating  contempt,  is  the  due,  they  would 
say,  of  such  a  teacher.  He  is  a  man  behind  the  age ;  a 
dark-minded  fanatic,  without  feeling,  or  justice,  or  rea- 
son, representing  God  by  the  low  severities  of  his  own 
morbid  nature.  And  yet  what  reverence  is  there  to 
Jesus,  in  the  promulgation  of  such  doctrine!  They 
that  deny  it  most  confidently  will  even  strain  them- 
selves, to  find  words  of  honor  and  eulogy,  in  which 
fitly  to  applaud  his  virtues  and  embody  their  sense  of 
his  perfections.  Meantime  they  go  into  careful  exami- 
nations of  what  seem  to  be  his  manifold  utterances  of 
the  doctrine  of  eternal  punishment,  and  by  laboriously 
ingenious  constructions,  which  he  could  easily  have 
made  unnecessary,  but  never  once  remembered  to 
make,  they  get  the  bad  meaning  wholly  out  of  them. 
Having  proved  him  thus  to  be,  in  fact,  about  the  faulti- 
est, loosest,  teacher,  in  a  matter  of  mere  fact,  that  ever 
undertook  to  lead  the  world,  they  acquiesce  in  him  per- 
fectly ;  their  reverence  is  complete ! 

They  do  not  perceive,  that  they  have  done  the  diffi- 
cult thing,  and  rejected  the  easy,  How  much  easier, 
when  they  were  detained  by  a  reverence  so  profound 
for  the  manifestly  superhuman  character  of  Christ, 


348  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

treating  him  as  they  could  no  other  being  uttering  such 
declarations,  to  believe  that  he  was  good  enough  and 

Admitted  still  to  Sreat  enough  to  see  the  truth  of  them  ; 
be  great,  why  not  too  good,  too  great,  as  already  proved 
to  their  feeling,  to  allow  them  any  hope 
of  improving  his  doctrine  by  the  screws  they  put  upon 
his  words.  The  case  is  one  where  the  text  —  "  For  my 
thoughts  are  not  your  thoughts,  neither  are  your  ways 
my  ways,  saith  the  Lord  "  —  ought  to  suggest  the  query 
whether,  possibly,  God  is  not  good  enough,  or  good  in 
a  sense  that  is  deep  enough,  to  levy  these  fearful  pun- 
ishments, just  because  of  his  goodness;  maintaining 
them  as  mysteries  of  beneficent  rule  whose  scope  and 
contents  are  to  us  inscrutable.  Again  — 

4.  A  true  Christian  inquirer,  struggling  with  a  bur- 
dened feeling,  under  the  huge  difficulties  of  this  ques- 

Where  eternal   tion,  will  be  very  apt  to  meet  with  such 


punishment    is   ^m(j  of  resuit.s  Or  effects,  falling  under 

denied,     shown  . 

to  be  a  moral  his  notice,  in  the  case  of  those  who  deny 
the  fact  of  eternal  punishment,  as  to  start 
a  certain  spiritual  revulsion  in  him  and  persuade  him 
that  Christ  had  some  sufficient,  profoundly  deep  and 
true  reason  for  his  doctrine,  whether  we  can  find  it  or 
not.  There  is  plainly  enough  no  object  in  preaching 
this  kind  of  salvation  (which  is  no  salvation,  because 
there  can  be  no  destruction,)  but  to  find  a  place  of  im- 
punity in  sin,  or  at  least  to  loosen  the  yoke  of  obliga- 
tion and  make  it  comfortable.  And  that,  when  it  is  a 
fact,  is  about  the  most  contemptible,  lowest  occupation  a 
mortal  can  be  in.  And  the  fruit  will  correspond  with 


CHAP.  V.  N-QT    DIMINISHED.  349 


the  effort  ;  for  the  followers  of  such  a  leading,  it  will  be 
observed,  range  themselves,  always  and  every  where,  on 
the  side  of  laxity,  or  the  side  opposite  to  justice  and 
punishment.  They  will  refer  all  sin  to  circumstances, 
and  take  the  blame  away.  Society  is  cruel,  they  will 
perceive,  but  wrong,  never.  But  when  they  come  to 
speak,  or  be  spoken  with,  in  regard  to  the  great  spirit- 
ual realities  of  the  spiritual  life  and  consciousness,  they 
will  scarcely  fail  to  make  a  demonstration  that  is 
simply  revolting.  To  converse  successively,  with  only 
two  or  three  persons,  brought  up  in  this  denial  of  fu- 
ture punishment,  and  have  the  conversation  turned 
upon  loving  God,  I  have  more  than  once  felt  would 
suffice  to  cure  any  earnest,  living  Christian  of  his  mis- 
givings of  future  punishment,  or  push  him  by  his  most 
rugged  and  resolute  doubts,  whether  he  can  solve  them 
or  not.  Instead  of  conceiving  of  the  divine  love  in 
that  deep,  tender  way  of  sacrifice  and  justifying  mercy, 
that  belongs  to  the  cross,  they  will  rattle  upon  the 
words  in  a  way  so  loose  and  light  as  to  be  even  shock- 
ing. "Do  I  love  God?  How  could  I  help  loving 
him  ?  God  has  never  done  any  thing  bad  to  me,  and 
never  wants  to  do  any  thing,  but  to  make  me  happy. 
Yes,  and  if  there  were  not  so  many  people  praying 
and  supplicating  dolefully,  as  if  they  were  afraid  of 
something,  or  God  a  being  to  be  afraid  of,  I  think  we 
should  all  be  happy."  Under  this  gospel  of  impunity, 
there  grows  up  a  religion  which  is  itself  a  kind  of  sauci- 
ness  to  God,  as  little  relieved,  as  possible,  by  any  sub- 
duing property.  Beautiful  charity!  love  that  bearest 

30 


350  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

all  men's  burdens!  love  that  believest,  hopest,  endur- 
est  all  things!  love  that  can  suffer  an  enemy!  love 
that  in  Jesus  suffered  for  a  world  of  enemies !  love  that 
is  born  of  God  supernaturall y  in  souls  under  evil !  love 
that  is  fed  and  fuelled  supernaturally,  by  Christ  and  his 
dear  passion,  inwardly  revealed !  what  hast  thou  to  do 
with  this  unchastened,  brassy,  dinning  confidence, 
which  asserts  a  religion  without  fear,  lays  a  claim  to 
happiness  apart  from  all  condition  of  repentance,  and 
magnifies  a  God  who,  without  maintaining  any  good 
of  principle,  consents  to  be  only  the  convenience  of  all ! 
I  draw  this  picture  not  for  any  purpose  of  odium,  but 
simply  because  it  suggests  and  so  nearly  justifies  the 
Punishment  an  suspicion,  that  Christ  had  a  reason  for 
intrinsic  element  his  doctrine  of  eternal  punishment,  in 
the  necessary  and,  to  him,  perceived 
wants  of  character  itself.  We  can  see,  at  a  glance,  that 
if  there  were  no  such  future  peril,  and  God  were  such  a 
being  that  no  fact  of  destruction  were  possible  under 
him,  then  there  could,  of  course,  be  no  salvation,  or 
Saviour.  So  far  it  was  a  point,  intrinsically,  of  Christi- 
anity, to  assert  the  doctrine  of  future  punishment; 
for  upon  that  basis  only  it  stands,  as  a  real  salvation. 
But  there  seems  to  have  been  a  deeper  and  more  subtle 
reason,  both  for  the  fact  of  such  punishment  originally 
instituted,  and  for  the  assertion  of  it  by  Christ ;  viz., 
that,  by  these  tremendous  severities  alone  of  God,  could 
men  be  made  to  feel  the  cutting  edge  of  principle 
enough  to  have  it  really  get  into  their  love,  and  make 
it  a  principled  love.  Otherwise  it  would  have  no 


CHAP.  V  NOT    DIMINISHED.  351 

moral  quality  at  all,  but  like  that  we  have  just  de- 
scribed, would  be  only  a  brazen  forwardness,  in  ap- 
proving such  a  God  as  meets  their  liking ;  a  God  with- 
out terrors,  concerned  to  get  them  into  happiness,  either 
with,  or  without,  principles. 

However  this  may  be,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  how 
far  the  success  and  saving  power  of  the  gospel  of  Christ 
depend  on  these  appeals  to  fear,  and  these  cogent  mo- 
tivities  of  interest,  by  which  he  so  unsparingly  presses 
the  world ;  for  by  these  it  is,  and  only  by  these,  that 
he  takes  men  at  the  point  where  they  have  any  suffi- 
cient sensibility.  By  this  appalling  law-work  he 
breaks  their  security,  startles  their  negligence,  rouses 
their  guiltiness  into  a  ferment,  and  calls  out  the  ques- 
tion, what  shall  we  do?  Never,  it  is  very  true,  does 
any  one  of  these  motivities  enter  into  the  staple  of  piety 
— they  are  spent  when  piety  begins,  or  at  least  passed 
by  accordingly  as  it  advances.  And  yet  these  terrible 
severities — not  too  terrible,  or  appalling  for  the  sturdy 
composure  and  hardness  of  sin — are  just  that  fire  in  the 
rear,  by  which,  as  a  more  rugged  constraint  upon  na- 
ture, the  guilty  are  gathered  to  the  spiritual  drawing, 
or  all-constraining  loveliness  and  love,  of  the  cross. 

But  Christ  also  adds  enforcement,  as  we  have  said, 
to  the  law — 

II.  In  the  fact  that  he  declares  himself  to  be  the  final 
judge  of  the  world.  Having  shown  the  divine  nature 
travailing  in  sacrifice  and  suffering  love  for  the  world, 
and  having  proclaimed  a  universal  end  of  God's  penal- 


352  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART!!!. 

allies,  to  such  as  are  joined  to  the  law-precept,  by  re- 
ceiving it  in  the  embrace  of  his  person,  he  must  needs 

He  will  vindicate    fortify     hls    attitude>     b7    some    corres' 

inw  by  tho  judg-  pondent  assertion   of  his  divine   emi- 

mont  of  the  world.    nen(;e  an(j  authority  .    which  he  does  by 

openly  asserting  his  personal  prerogative,  as  the  final 
judge  of  the  world.  As  he  is  the  Saviour  of  mankind, 
so  he  is  to  be  Judge  of  mankind — and  Judge,  because 
he  is  Saviour.  For  he  distinctly  intimates  himself  that 
he  takes  this  necessary  point  of  self-assertion,  to  restrain 
the  presumption  otherwise  likely  to  be  raised,  in  the 
coarse,  blind  feeling  of  men,  by  his  great  condescen- 
sions— "  For  the  Father  judgeth  no  man,  but  hath  com. 
mitted  all  judgment  unto  the  Son,  that  all  men  should 
honor  the  Son  even  as  they  honor  the  Father."  Again 
also,  when  he  says — "And  hath  given  him  authority  to 
execute  judgment  also,  because  he  is  the  Son  of  Man." 
In  other  words,  the  very  fact  that  he  was  become  the 
Son  of  Man,  humbled  to  the  weakness  of  humanity, 
was  itself  a  reason  why  his  equilibrium  of  dignity 
should  be  saved,  by  the  counter- weight  of  this  tremen- 
dous office — an  office  all  the  more  fit  to  such  a  purpose, 
that  judges,  in  the  civil  state,  are  conceived  to  have  no 
right  of  leniency,  or  mercy,  being  set  for  nothing  but  the 
exact  application  of  law  to  the  exact  merits  of  causes ; 
which  having  done,  whether  in  the  sentence  of  life,  or  of 
death,  their  official  function  ceases.  And  so  Christ,  hav- 
ing bowed  himself  to  all  humblest  conditions  of  suffering 
and  sorrow,  that  he  might  ransom  guilty  souls  from  their 
deserved  penalties,  ceases  fully  and  finally  from  a  rela- 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  358 

tionship  that  would  make  him  possibly  no  better,  at 
last,  than  a  convenience  for  men's  sins,  and  takes  his 
attitude  of  judgeship  over  them;  waiving  henceforth 
all  the  inclinings  and  soft  connivings  and  tender  flexi- 
bilities of  his  mercy,  that  he  may  be  forever  known  as 
the  arbiter  and  king  of  the  worlds. 

I  do  not  undertake  to  settle,  in  this  connection,  pre- 
cisely what  is  meant  by  the  judgment  of  the  world; 
whether  it  is  to  be  literally  a  trial  had 

,  v  ,  ,  ,     f  J       -  The  judgment 

in  public  assembly,  or  before  the  grand  made  necessary  by 
convocation  of  the  worlds,  or  whether  the  supernatural 

salvation. 

such  representations  given  are  only  fig- 
ures impressively  drawn,  to  give,  in  the  general,  or  by 
means  of  one  general  scene,  what  is  passing  and  to  pass 
in  the  innumerable  and  particular  cases  of  souls,  when 
they  arrive,  or  come  in  to  receive  their  personal  awards 
and  enter  on  their  everlasting  state.  This,  however,  will 
be  obvious  that,  if  there  were  no  work  of  grace  or 
mercy  on  foot,  no  supernatural  salvation,  there  would 
scarcely  need  to  be  any  judge  of  the  world.  The  trans- 
gressors would  go  to  their  exact  lot  of  punishment  just 
as  stones  under  gravity  fall  to  the  ground.  The  grand 
penal  order  of  nature  would  be  at  once  judge  and  exe- 
cutioner, and  they  would  sink  to  their  true  level,  by 
inevitable  laws,  that  find  them  out  as  exactly  even,  as 
God  himself  can  know  them. 

But  the  judgment  of  the  world  under  Christianity  is 
made  necessary,  by  the  fact  that,  in  a  mixed  experience 
under  law  and  grace,  where  the  penal  order  of  nature 
is  restricted,  tempered,  mitigated,  by  the  supernatural 

30* 


354  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

interactions  of  grace,  no  punishment  takes  place  in  the 
exact  manner  and  degree  that  it  would  under  natural 
retribution,  pure  and  simple.  The  laws  of  natural  ret- 
ribution continue,  in  one  view,  as  at  the  first,  and  their 
operation  continues,  and  yet  their  action  has  been  so 
far  modified  hitherto  by  the  interactions  of  a  supernatu- 
ral mercy — engaged  all  our  life  long  to  rescue  us  from 
them — also  by  the  fact  that  a  new  matter  of  responsi- 
bility has  come  into  their  jurisdiction  to  increase, 
henceforward,  the  guilt  of  sin,  and  to  intensify  propor- 
tionally its  desolating  penal  effects,  that  a  supernatural 
judgment-seat  is  wanted,  to  settle  the  account  of  justice 
and  distribute  the  allotments  of  souls.  When  so  many 
diverse  and  mixed  qualities  of  character  are  generated 
under  the  contesting  powers  of  penalty  and  mercy,  so 
many  variously  appearing,  yet  really  similar,  so  many 
similarly  appearing,  yet  really  various,  kinds  of  prod- 
uct, some  tribunal  of  judgment  appears  to  be  wanted, 
to  make  the  necessary  discrimination  of  desert  and  or- 
der. It  is  a  matter  of  no  great  consequence  to  know 
what  is  the  exact  grade  of  any  man's  demerit — let  the 
laws  of  retribution  settle  that — but  it  is  a  matter  of  con- 
sequence where  some  are  so  bold  in  their  conceit,  and 
some  are  so  dejected  in  their  modesty  and  conscious 
lack  of  goodness,  to  have  the  great  life-question  of  or- 
der and  kind  settled,  by  a  solemn  act  of  recognition  or 
rejection. 

The  Christian  gospel  requires,  in  this  manner,  a 
judgment-seat,  and  in  this  office  Christ  himself  asserts 
the  authority  that  is  given  him.  The  subject  is  ad- 


CnAP.Y.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  355 

verted  to  in  a  great  many  of  his  parables,  and  expressly 
set  forth  in  many  of  his  public  discourses.  In  the 
twenty-fifth  chapter  of  Matthew  he  pho-  Tho  dies  ir(R  of 
tographs  the  transaction  in  a  scene  of  Christ  and  his  foi- 
judgment  formally  conceived  as  uni- 
versal. He  comes,  the  Son  of  Man,  to  sit  upon  the 
throne  of  his  glory.  All  nations  are  gathered  before 
him,  not  to  be  graduated,  but  separated  in  kind, 
one  from  another,  as  sheep  from  goats.  These  he  re- 
cognizes and  calls,  these  he  disowns  and  repels,  all  un- 
der the  simple  question,  whether  they  are  with  him  per- 
sonally in  his  cause  and  with  him  in  his  sacrifice  or  not. 
Some  who  were  too  modest  and  poor  in  spirit,  to  have 
any  feeling  of  confidence,  are  surprised  by  his  welcome 
• — "  ye  did  it  unto  me  " — asking,  "  when  ministered  we 
to  thee?"  And  others  who  have  always  been  assuming 
to  maintain  his  cause,  and  half  expecting  him  to  ac- 
knowledge his  great  obligations  to  them,  are  as  much 
surprised  by  his  terrible  sentence  of  rejection,  "ye  did 
it  not  to  me."  Thus  before  Christ's  bar,  as  he  himself 
conceives,  the  tremendous  issues  of  life  are  to  be  finally 
determined — "These  shall  go  away  into  everlasting 
punishment,  the  righteous  into  life  eternal." 

Furthermore  how  entirely  compatible  his  love  and 
suffering  patience  are,  with  all  severest  rigors  of  justice, 
will  be  seen  in  the  impressions  of  his  judgment  office  and 
day  that  are  held  by  his  followers.  They  call  it  the 
dies  me,  the  great  day  of  his  wrath,  not  refusing  to 
magnify  the  day  as  a  day  of  great  majesty  and  revela- 
tion, even  "  the  revelation  of  the  righteous  judgment  of 


356  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

God."  They  have  plainly  enough  no  -such  thought  as 
that  the  justice  of  God,  or  the  divine  op/q  has  been  sat- 
isfied and  forever  evened  in  its  demands,  by  the  suffer- 
ings of  Christ.  Nor  have  they  taken  up,  it  is  equally 
plain,  any  such  impressions  of  the  merciful  Jesus,  the 
dear  Christ  of  God,  as  makes  it  incompatible  for  him  to 
be  invested,  some  time,  in  these  awful  rigors  of  judg- 
ment. That  righteous  opy*},  that  deep  instinct  of  justice, 
which  dwells  in  every  bosom  of  love,  and  without 
which  love  could  never  rise  into  the  majesty  of  holiness, 
that  wrath  which  had  sometimes  kindled  so  terrible  a 
fire  of  animosity  in  the  loving  ministry  of  their  Master, 
they  expect  to  be  revealed  in  his  judgment  proceedings, 
and  they  even  appear  to  look  upon  him  in  it,  with  a 
dread  the  more  appalling,  that,  as  being  the  natural  and 
necessary  counterpart  in  character  of  so  great  sensibility 
and  self-sacrifice,  it  should  therefore  be  in  correspondent 
measures.  Hence  the  sharp  and  dreadful  paradox  they 
bolt  upon  us — in  a  form  of  words  having  such  vindictive 
energy  that  there  is  nothing,  as  far  as  I  know,  in  all  hu- 
man language  to  match  it — "  the  wrath  of  the  Lamb." 

It  is  certainly  most  remarkable,  considering  how 
Christ  himself  is  the  first  promulgator  of  eternal  pun- 
ishment, and  is  to  be  himself  the  judge  of  the  world — 
revealing  the  terrible  wrath-power  of  his  kingdom,  in  so 
many  ways  and  terms  so  appalling — that  he  should  be 
conceived  to  have  almost  overturned  God's  law  by  his 
terms  of  mercy,  and  only  not  to  have  done  it,  by  con- 
senting to  be  an  offering  before  the  offended  wrath  of 
the  law !  So  he  compensated  the  law  by  the  contribu- 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  357 

tion  of  his  sufferings,  and  satisfied  the  dues  of  justice. 
Why  does  it  never  occur  to  such  as  are  taken  by  this 
kind  of  theologic  contrivance,  that  after  Christ  has  made 
due  satisfaction  to  the  wrath-principle  of  God's  justice, 
there  is  still  wanted,  above  all,  some  more  tremendous 
sacrifice,  to  satisfy  the  wrath  of  the  Lamb  ?  Never  be- 
fore was  the  vindicatory  principle  in  government  so 
fearfully  asserted  as  by  him.  When  therefore  he  has 
made  an  end  of  pacification  by  his  cross,  what  is  to  be 
provided  that  shall  pacify  him?  Shall  he  /satisfy  his 
own  wrath  ?  Or  is  it  possible  that  he  should  somehow 
justify  without  any  satisfaction?  And  if  that  is  possi- 
ble, is  not  the  whole  scheme  of  satisfaction  exploded, 
and  the  wrath-principle  found  to  be  itself  compatible 
with  mercy? 

I  assume  it  then,  with  confidence,  to  be  a  conclusion 
firmly  established,  that  Christ,  in  preparing  the  free  re- 
mission of  sins,  has  not  taken  from  God's  The  cnforce- 
law,  or  at  all  weakened,  its  necessary  en-  meut8  thcn  are 

J  all    kept     good 

forcements.     Author  himself  and  first  ad-   without  a 


equate  promulgator  of  the  doctrine  of  tlon- 
eternal  punishment,  invested  with  all  the  honors  and 
authoritative  rights  of  the  Supreme  Judge  of  men; 
armed,  in  such  capacity,  with  indignations  equal  to  the 
lamb-like  patience'  of  his  sacrifice  —  it  is  not  by  him, 
that  men  have  the  pressure  of  God's  penal  enforcements 
taken  off.  On  the  contrary,  when  before  had  the  law 
such  a  pressure  of  enforcement  in  the  plane  of  interest, 
as  it  has  under  Christ  himself?  When  before  were 


358  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  ILL 

such  thunderbolts  dropped  in  the  path  of  the  fears? 
When  had  the  misgivings  of  guilty  conviction  such 
earthquakes  to  feel  heaving  under  ground?  When 
were  delay  and  neglectful  ness  cut  short,  by  such  hidden 
perils  waiting  for  the  spring?  Why,  it  is  even  a  full 
half  the  peculiar  force  of  Christianity,  that  it  brings  the 
law  of  God  into  a  pressure  on  the  soul  so  nearly  irre- 
sistible! It  had  before  no  motive  in  comparison. 
Christ  preaches  to  the  fears  arid  the  self-interested  cal- 
culations of  deliberative  prudence,  in  a  way  so  positive 
as  to  suggest  no  sense  of  scruple  in  him,  and  permit  no 
evasion  of  doubt  in  us.  He  begins  low  down,  at  the 
underwork,  we  may  almost  say,  of  nature,  and  expects 
to  regenerate,  in  the  supernatural  life  of  faith,  only  them 
whom  he  has  first  arrested  and  concluded  in  sin.  The 
letter  that  killeth  is  his,  as  truly  as  the  Spirit  that  giveth 
life. 

No,  if  there  be  any  thing  in  the  gospel  of  Christ  least 
of  all  to  be  apprehended,  it  is  a  discontinuance,  or 
weakening  of  law.  The  law-power  not  only  remains 
uninjured,  to  do  its  work  of  enforcement  in  souls,  but 
it  is  brought  closer  to  them  and  is  made  weightier  and 
more  imminent  in  its  pressure,  than  ever  before.  Not 
only  temporal  motives  but  all  the  powers,  in  fact,  of  the 
world  to  come,  are  now  crowded  into  its  sanctions. 
And  so  little  apprehension  is  there  accordingly,  in  the 
New  Testament,  of  any  possible  damage  to  God's  law, 
or  justice,  that  the  immense  theologic  concern  for  it, 
which  puts  us  to  a  strain  of  contrivance  so  pressing,  is 
even  most  innocently  overlooked.  I  do  not  even  recall 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  359 

any  single  mention,  by  the  New  Testament  writers,  of 
the  fact  that  Christ,  in  his  death,  was  laying  a  necessary 
"ground"  of  forgiveness,  or  justification,  without  which 
it  would  not  be  safe,  as  a  matter  of  law  and  sound  gov- 
ernment, to  forgive.  He  comes  to  work  out  forgive- 
ness, or  rather  to  work  it  in — this  is  abundantly  de- 
clared— but  there  is  no  syllable  of  reference  to  the  fact 
that  he  is  doing  so  much,  or  contributing  so  great  suf- 
fering, to  make  forgiveness  possible.  There  appears  to 
be  no  suspicion  as  yet  that  this  kind  of  meaning  has 
only  been  foisted  upon  the  word,  and  does  not  belong 
to  it,  but  the  discovery  must  ere  long  arrive.  And  yet, 
if  the  case  were  different,  if  there  must  be  a  loss  to  the 
law  from  the  dispensation  of  forgiveness,  and  a  compen- 
sation must  be  made  to  the  law,  what  grander,  more  in- 
disputable, compensation  could  be  offered  by  Christ, 
than  his  new  doctrine  of  eternal  punishment,  set  home 
by  the  tremendous  emphasis  he  gives  it  in  the  declara- 
tion, that  he  will  be  the  Judge  himself! 

But  there  is  a  possible  objection  that  requires  to  be 
noticed.  Thus  if  natural  causes,  or  causes  in  the 
scheme  of  nature,  have  been  so  arranged 

Retributive 

as  to  chastise  and  duly  punish  all  sin,  and   causcs  not  aboi- 

if  then  Christ  intervenes  by  a  movement  »hed  by  deliver- 
ance from  them. 

supernatural,  to  work  a  release  from  these 
causes  in  the  redemption  of  souls,  and  does  actually  de- 
liver them,  it  appears,  after  all,  that  the  enforcement  of 
law  is  so  far,  at  least,  given  up,  or  put  bye.  To  this  I 
answer,  first,  that  the  enforcement  is  no  more  given  up 
than  the  law  of  gravity  is  given  up  when  I  sustain,  by 


360  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

my  will,  a  body  that  would  otherwise  fall  to  the 
ground ;  for  in  such  a  case,  the  law  of  gravity  contin- 
ues as  truly  as  if  it  were  left  to  its  own  way.  And, 
secondly,  that  the  force-power  of  nature  was  originally 
set,  to  work  enforcement  for  the  law  of  duty,  just  be- 
cause and  by  means  of  a  grace-power,  supernatural  ly 
working  with  it  and  complementary  to  it.  There  is  no 
greater  mistake  than  to  assume,  as  many  do,  that  the 
law  was  put  forward  first  to  be  maintained  by  enforce- 
ment, and  then  that  the  grace-power  comes  in  afterward 
to  displace  it.  The  scheme  of  moral  government  was 
to  be  a  double  acting  and  essentially  restorative  scheme 
from  the  first,  and  the  two  great  factors  were  to  be  co- 
ordinate, always  going  along  by  a  correspondent  devel- 
opment, and  assisting  each  the  other.  And  exactly  this 
is  what  we  find  even  in  the  facts  of  the  New  Testament ; 
the  side  of  retribution  appears,  according  to  our  human 
judgment,  to  be  intensified  in  about  the  same  ratio  as 
the  side  of  grace.  Neither  is  any  thing  more  clear, 
than  that  the  enforcement  side  depends  on  the  gracious, 
quite  as  much  as  this  on  the  other.  For  the  retributive 
causes  of  nature,  once  beginning  to  run,  and  wholly  left 
to  themselves,  put  the  subject  down,  at  once,  under  a 
doom  of  complete  disability,  and  cease  to  have  any 
value  as  enforcements  at  all.  No  longer  motives,  they 
are  simply  manacles.  But  the  moment  a  supernatural 
grace  is  felt  coming  in,  as  it  did  at  the  first,  to  bring 
hope  and  liberating  help,  the  retributive  causes  become 
enforcements,  just  as  they  were  meant  to  be.  The  doc- 
trine of  endless  punishment,  taken  as  put  into  words, 


CHAP.  V.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  361 

was  never  any  thing  but  a  version  of  the  fact,  that  re- 
tributive causes  are  naturally  endless  in  their  propaga- 
tions ;  but  the  understanding  was,  and  always  has  been, 
that  a  supernatural  grace,  going  side  by  side,  should 
even  keep  them  in  power,  as  they  give  power  to  it,  and 
that  so  the  grand  joint  product  of  justice  and  grace 
should  be  always  preparing.  The  very  last  thing  to  be 
apprehended  is  that  the  forgiving  side  is  going  to  pros- 
trate the  law  side.  The  law  could  do  nothing  but  cre- 
ate disability,  in  that  it  was  weak,  without  -the  other. 
If  there  had  been  a  law  given  which  could  have  given 
righteousness,  verily  righteousness  should  have  been  by 
the  law.  But  now  the  law  is  a  schoolmaster  for  grace, 
and  righteousness  a  free  gift  for  the  law.  So  between 
both  there  is  salvation. 

Besides  the  personal  moral  power  of  Christ,  that 
which  he  obtains  by  his  suffering  ministry  of  love  and 
sacrifice,  gets  a  tonic  efficacy  how  majestic,  by  the  tre- 
mendous moral  emphasis  of  his  denouncements,  and  the 
energy  he  shows  in  being  able  to  use  force  enough  for 
his  purposes;  even  as  every  great  general  gets  the 
moral  power  to  carry  his  will  by  a  word,  in  the  fact  that 
lie  has  been  able  to  carry  it  by  his  previous  champion- 
ship of  force,  in  fields  more  impressive  than  words. 

In  advancing  this  doctrine  of  punishment,  I  am  well 
aware  that  some  will  call  it  the  doctrine  of  Radaman- 
thus,  and  that  perhaps  without  concern  This  ru  ed 

to  settle  the  question,  whether  Christ  unphiiunthropizing 
had  any  better  title  to  respect  than  he.    gospel  wil1 8tand' 
They  have  had  a  thought  of  God's  beneficence,  they 

31 


362  LEGAL    ENFORCEMENTS  PART  III. 

will  say,  and  they  dare  to  believe  in  it.  They  believe 
that  his  Creatorship  and  counsel  will  be  vindicated,  as 
they  only  can,  by  results  of  universal  order  and  happi- 
ness, such  as  he  has  put  it  in  our  hearts  to  desire. 
Perhaps  I  am  as  much  exercised  by  the  desire  as  they, 
but  I  can  not  take  that  desire  as  a  proof.  Our  exist- 
ence has  been  mixed  with  discord  from  the  first,  and, 
for  aught  we  any  of  us  know,  this  rough  element  be- 
longs inherently  to  the  highest  attainable  state  of  good. 
That  their  gospel  of  speculative  philanthropism  is  car- 
rying just  now  the  vote  of  the  world,  more  and  more 
largely,  is  quite  probable.  But  I  have  thought  much, 
in  comparison,  of  the  older,  more  rugged,  rougher  gos- 
pel, and  I  feel  obliged  to  say,  that  it  looks  most  real, 
and  capable,  and  great.  There  is  nerve  in  this,  and 
there  is  none  in  the  other.  Christ  here  takes  hold  of 
human  nature  as  if  he  knew  it,  and  had  something 
great  to  do  for  it.  He  bears  a  look  of  mystery,  great- 
ness in  counsel,  and  efficient  rule,  such  as  the  God  of 
the  world  visibly  bears  himself — He  that  has  thunders, 
and  tempests,  and  earthquakes,  and  wild  waters,  and 
death-dealing  causes,  hovering  in  silence,  or  ravening 
in  terror,  through  all  his  works.  The  Christ,  so  care- 
fully separated  from  his  own  reiterated  fact  of  future 
punishment,  has  no  grand  governmental  strategy,  and 
bears  no  hand  of  mighty  working  any  where.  No  man 
need  ever  be  warned  lest  he  "be  offended  in  him;"  for 
we  find  him  offering  only  sweets  for  motivities,  and 
bathing  in  soft  odors  and  oily  promises  the  obstinacy 
of  sin.  No !  the  Christ  of  the  old  gospel,  he  of  eternal 


CHAP.  Y.  NOT    DIMINISHED.  363 

punishment,  he  of  the  judgment-day — the  more  I  think 
of  him,  and  of  man,  and  the  kind  of  Saviour  man  re- 
quires to  get  hold  of  him,  and  rouse  him  out  of  his 
death-torpor  in  sin,  the  more  clear  it  is  that  he,  the  ter- 
rible Christ,  is  the  Christ  we  want.  The  other,  I 
strongly  suspect  is  a  conceit  of  human  opinion,  repre- 
senting only  a  phase  or  fashion  of  the  time,  that  will  be 
very  soon  gone  by ;  while  the  real  Immanuel,  coming  in 
much  mystery,  and  raising  many  hard  questions,  and 
fitly  called  Wonderful,  will  be  proving,  in  all  time,  his 
great  power  and  beneficence,  only  the  more  sublimely ; 
having  quantities  in  him  that  are  not  from  men,  or  in 
men's  measures ;  breaking  out  visibly  in  great  victories 
all  down  the  ages,  and  reigning,  as  will  finally  be  ac 
knowledged,  in  a  kingdom  that  shall  have  no  end. 

So  far  we  accept  the  unquestionable  future  of  reve- 
lation. As  regards  that  ideal  kosmos,  in  which  our 
philanthropic  friends  propose  to  confer  so  much  greater 
honor  upon  God,  I  will  simply  suggest,  that  they  might 
less  dishonor  him,  if  they  could  allow  that  our  present 
state  is,  in  some  true  sense,  a  kosmos.  God  never  made 
any  state  that  was  not.  Inasmuch,  therefore,  as  his  fu- 
ture kosmos  must,  like  the  present,  make  room  for  the 
fact  of  liberty,  who  can  be  sure  that  there  will  not  be  in 
it  jars  and  thunders  of  dissent,  impossible  to  be  ex- 
cluded— shocks  that  will  stir  the  tragic  movement  in 
feeling,  and  keep  off  the  tameness  of  any  such  total 
elysium,  or  general  Peace-Society  state,  as  our  specula- 
tive seers  are  wont  to  promise — even  as  the  kosmos  of 
matter  rests  in  the  perilous  equilibrium  and  lively  play 
of  antagonistic  forces  ? 


CHAPTER  VI. 

GOD'S  RECTORAL  HONOR  EFFECTIVELY  MAINTAINED. 

To  maintain  the  precept  and  enforce  the  sanctions 
of  law,  are  not  the  only  matters  of  concern  to  be  pro- 
vided for,  in  the  promulgation  of  forgiveness ;  a  third 
matter,  much  insisted  on,  is  that  the  magistrate  him- 
self keep  good  his  Rectoral  Honor  and  the  Legal 
Justice  of  his  magistracy.  Kegarded  as  the  adminis- 
trator of  instituted  government,  he  is  practically  the 
government  himself,  and  is  looked  iipon  as  being  the 
government.  Hence  if  it  should  happen  that,  in  the 
introduction  of  a  free  justification,  God's  magisterial 
character — his  Kectoral  Honor  and  Justice — is  let  down, 
or  loses  the  necessary  impressiveness,  the  damage  in- 
curred will  be  fatal.  And  this,  it  will  be  remembered, 
was  one  of  the  alleged  forms  of  detriment,  or  damage, 
to  be  apprehended,  unless  some  kind  of  satisfaction  is 
made  to  God's  justice.  All  the  compensation  theories 
have  a  principal  respect  to  this  supposed  necessity. 
For  how  shall  God  be  just,  and  have  respect  in  the 
character  of  justice,  unless  he  executes  justice?  or  un- 
less he  somehow  has  his  justice  satisfied,  by  volunteer 
pains  contributed  for  that  purpose? 

Hence  the  many,  variously  turned  contrivances  of 


CHAP.  VI.     GOD'S   RECTORAL  HONOR,   ETC.  365 

substitution,  by  which  this  point  is  supposed  to  be  car- 
ried, and  a  ground  of  justification  prepared  that  saves 
the  justice  and  public  honor  of  God,  in  a  release  of  his 
penalties.  These  various  schemes  or  theories  are  made 
up  in  the  terms,  official  substitution,  penal  suffering, 
expiation,  judicial  satisfaction,  ransom,  purchase,  bear- 
ing the  curse,  payment  of  the  debt,  and  the  like ;  used 
sometimes  interchangeably  as  being,  to  some  extent, 
equivalents,  or  more  commonly  set  up,  each  by  itself,  as 
the  idol  figure  of  some  peculiar  doctrine  dominated 
by  it. 

Our  New  England  teachers,  for  nearly  a  century 
past,  have  commonly  taken  a  form  of  representation 
that  has  not  as  yet  obtained  general  cur-  The  Ncw  En^_ 
rency,  any  where  else.  Pressed  by  the  land  scheme  of 
difficulty  of  any  scheme  that  supposes  a  8ubstitution- 
literal  satisfaction  of  God's  justice,  or  the  release  of  the 
guilty  obtained  by  the  penal  suffering  of  the  innocent 
—because  it  so  profoundly  shocks  the  most  immovable, 
and  most  nearly  innate  convictions  of  our  moral 
nature — also  by  the  new-sprung  inference  of  universal 
salvation  that  inevitably  follows;  viz.,  that,  if  Christ 
has  borne  the  punishment  of  the  world,  no  principle  of 
justice  in  God  will  ajlow  him  to  inflict  that  punish- 
ment again  upon  the  transgressors  themselves — 
pressed  by  these  difficulties  they  began  to  conceive  that 
Christ,  in  his  cross,  maintained  the  righteousness  of 
God  without  punishment,  by  what  was  expressed,  to 
the  same  effect  as  in  punishment,  of  God's  abhorrence 
to  sin.  Christ,  they  conceived,  has  simply  shown,  by 


366  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

his  death,  the  same  abhorrence  to  sin  that  would  have 
been  shown  by  the  punishment  of  the  guilty.  The 
righteousness  of  God  therefore  stands  erect  and  fair, 
even  though  punishment  is  released. 

Of  this  latter  and  later  mode  of  doctrine  I  will  speak 
first  and  briefly,  recurring  afterwards  to  the  older, 
which  turns  on  the  penal  suffering  of  Christ,  and  the 
maintenance  and  satisfaction  thereby  of  God's  justice. 

There  is  no  room  for  scruple  in  affirming,  that  every 
thing  done  by  Christ  gets  its  y-alue,  under  laws  of  ex- 
No  fault  that  it  Pression>  or>  as  in  modern  phrase,  under 
turns  on  what  is  terms  of  esthetic  representation  ;  Chris- 
tianity as  a  power  on  the  world,  is  ex- 
pression. Nay,  the  incarnation  itself  is  what  is  ex- 
pressed, and  not  what  is  contained,  or  suffered  quantita- 
tively as  a  compensation  to  justice,  in  the  incarnate 
person.  Punishment  itself,  apart  from  the  matter  of 
penal  enforcement,  considered  in  the  last  previous 
chapter,  has  besides  a  most  sacred  and  noble  efficacy  in 
what  it  expresses  of  God — the  determination  of  his 
will,  his  righteousness,  in  a  word  his  rectoral  fidelity  to 
the  law.  This  expression,  too,  is  wanted  as  being  the 
equivalent  of  a  like  impression;  for  nothing  is  ex- 
pressed to  us,  save  as  it  is  impressed  in  us,  in  the  same 
degree.  And  in  just  this  way  the  gospel  itself  is  re- 
solvable into  expression,  because  it  is  wanted  in  a  way 
of  impression ;  which  is  the  real  effect  and  mode  of  its 
value. 

Thus  far  we  have  no  difficulty ;  but  the  question  still 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  367 

remains  whether  a  fit  compensation  is  really  made  for 
the  release  of  punishment,  by  what  is  expressed  of 
abhorrence  to  sin,  in  the  sufferings  of  Christ?  That 
no  compensation  is  wanted — -justice  and  forgiveness  be- 
ing co-factors,  working  together  in  the  instituted  gov- 
ernment of  God,  and  the  justice-factor  being  even 
confirmed  in  its  vigor,  by  the  revelation  of  future  pun- 
ishment and  the  inauguration  of  Christ  as  the  judge  of 
the  world — was  abundantly  shown  in  the  last  chapter. 
But  consenting,  for  the  present,  to  waive  this  advan- 
tage, we  accept  the  question,  whether  any  expression 
made  of  abhorrence  to  sin  is  a  proper  and  sufficient 
substitute  for  punishment  ? 

And  here  it  occurs  to  us,  at  the  outset,  as  a  very 
obvious  fact,  that  abhorrence  to  sin  expresses  almost 
nothing  that  would  be  expressed  by  pun-  Abhorrence  t 
ishment.  Abhorrence  is  a  word  of  recoil  sin  no  fitequiva- 
simply  and  not  a  word  of  majesty.  lcnt  of  justice' 
There  is  no  enforcement,  no  judicial  vigor  in  it.  I 
may  abhor  what  I  am  only  too  weak,  or  too  much  in 
the  way  of  false  pity,  to  handle  with  the  due  severity. 
It  does  not  even  require  a  perfect  being  to  abhor  sin, 
especially  in  the  wicked  forms  of  it — that  is  to  draw 
back  from  it,  as  being  disgusted  and  shocked  by  it. 
But  there  is  no  such  drawing  back  in  justice.  Justice 
moves  on  in  the  positive  vigor  of  the  wrath -principle, 
girded  with  inflexible  majesty,  for  the  doing  upon 
wrong  of  what  wrong  deserves.  To  put  forward  an 
expression  therefore  of  God's  abhorrence  to  sin,  as  a 
substitute  for  justice,  is  to  give  it  the  weakest  possible 


368  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

substitute.  If  the  abhorrence  could  be  shown  keeping 
company  with  justice  and  justice  with  it,  there  would 
be  no  deficiency,  but  to  make  a  governmental  sanction 
out  of  abhorrence  by  itself,  and  publish  a  free  for- 
giveness to  sin,  on  the  ground  of  it,  is  to  make  forgive- 
ness safe  by  a  much  less  positive  and  weaker  way  of 
handling  than  forgiveness  itself.  All  doubt  on  this 
point  ought  to  be  forever  ended,  by  simply  asking  what 
kind  of  figure,  as  regards  efficiency,  any  government 
of  the  world  would  make,  dropping  off  its  punish- 
ments and  substituting  abhorrences  ? 

But  this  abhorrence  theory  encounters  another  objec- 
tion equally  fatal,  in  the  fact  that  really  no  abhorrence 

NO  abhorrence   at  a11  to  sin  is  exPresse<*  in  the  suffering 
expressed       in  death  of  Christ.     All  manifestations  of 

Christ's  death.  -i  -,  .,  -,.    ., 

goodness  and  purity  are  implicit  evi- 
dences of  such  abhorrence,  but  beyond  that  we  dis- 
cover no  evidence  more  direct.  To  what  in  the  trans- 
action of  the  cross  can  God's  abhorrence,  by  any  possi- 
bility, fasten  itself?  Does  God  abhor  the  person  of 
Jesus?  No.  His  character?  No.  His  redeeming 
office  ?  No.  The  sins  of  the  world  that  are  upon 
him  ?  They  are  not  upon  him,  save  in  a  figure,  as  the 
burden  that  his  love  so  divinely  assumes.  His  standing 
in  the  place  of  transgressors?  He  stands  not  in  that 
place  at  all,  as  having  their  moral  desert  upon  him — 
only  in  their  place  as  a  good  man  stands  in  the  place 
of  his  enemy,  to  bear  his  wrongs  and  make  his  own 
violated  feeling  the  argument  of  pity  and  patience  with 
him.  Where  then  does  the  abhorrence  of  God  take 


CrtAP.^VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  369 

hold  of  Christ  or  of  his  death  at  all  ?  What  does  it  find 
in  him,  or  about  him,  or  on  him,  or  under  him,  that 
can  be  any  wise  abhorrent?  If  it  should  be  said  that 
God  really  abhors  nothing  in  him,  but  only  lays 
severity  upon  him,  to  be  taken  by  us  as  the  sign  of  his 
abhorrence,  then  how  does  it  appear  that  the  severity 
laid  upon  him  has  any  moral  significance  at  all,  if  it  is 
not  penal  suffering  ?  If  he  is  put  in  our  place  to  suffer 
the  penalty  of  our  sins,  then  we  can  easily  see  abhor- 
rence to  our  sins  expressed  in  his  suffering.  But  mere 
severities  and  pains  laid  upon  him,  even  though  God 
violated  his  own  deep  sympathies  and  loving  approba- 
tions to  do  it,  can  only  show  the  fact  of  something  very 
abhorrent  somewhere,  and  is  much  more  likely  to  raise 
abhorrence  in  us,  than  to  signify  God's  abhorrence  to  us. 
It  will  be  found  accordingly,  if  the  language  of  those 
who  take  up  this  abhorrence  theory  is  carefully  watched, 
that  they  have  a  latent  reference  back  T  . 

*  Latent    resump- 

a  I  ways  to  Christ,  as  being  in  some  penal  tion  still  of  the 
condition,  without  which  our  sin  is  no  per 
way  concerned  with  his  suffering,  or  his  suffering  with 
it.  The  object  was  to  get  away  from  the  very  repulr 
Hive  idea  of  a  penal  character  in  Christ's  suffering,  and 
KO  from  the  appalling  objections  that  seemed  to  be  in- 
curred by  it;  but  when  the  point  of  difficulty  is  once 
turned  by  the  softer  word  "  abhorrence,"  we  look  back 
and  find  the  penal  suffering  held  mentally  in  reserve,  in 
order  to  get  the  Divine  Sufferer  into  an  attitude,  where 
God's  abhorrences  can  be  imagined  to  adhere  to  him,  or 
find  expression  through  him.  Thus  it  will  be  said 


370  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

continually,  that  "God's  abhorrence  to  sin  was  laid 
upon  his  Son  " — which  means,  if  it  means  any  thing, 
that  God's  judicial  indignations  were  laid  upon  him ; 
that  God  withdraws  from  the  Son  in  the  agony  and 
upon  the  cross,  to  signify  his  displeasure,  that  is,  his 
judicial  displeasure;  nay,  the  doctrine  will  sometimes 
be  even  doubled  round  again  so  as  to  say  that  God's 
"  justice  is  satisfied  "  in  his  death;  only  to  be  doubled 
back,  of  course,  when  the  objections  incurred  by  the 
scheme  of  penalty  are  to  be  met ;  for  then  it  will  be 
answered  that  Christ  does  not  suffer  penally,  but  only 
in  a  way  to  let  God's  abhorrence  to  sin  be  expressed 
through  his  suffering. 

I  conclude,  on  the  whole,  that  this  New  England  ex- 
pedient of  conceiving  the  substitution  of  Christ,  as  be- 
ing only  God's  way  of  showing  his  repugnances  to  sin 
by  the  suffering  of  Christ,  instead  of  doing  it  by  the 
punishment  of  the  guilty,  has  in  fact,  no  base  of  reality, 
even  to  those  who  resort  to  it,  save  as  it  reverts  to  the 
older  scheme  of  penal  suffering  and  resumes  all  the 
methods  of  that  scheme.  Indeed  it  will  even  be  found, 
that  Dr.  Edwards,  having  taken  the  ground  *  that  "  the 
death  of  Christ  manifests  God's  hatred  of  sin,  in  the 
same  sense  as  the  damnation  of  the  wicked,"  still  car- 
ries out  his  reasonings,  under  the  very  scheme  of  penal 
suffering  that  has  been  renounced,  to  a  point  of  excess 
in  that  scheme  that  is  abundantly  shocking;  viz.,  to 
the  conclusion  that  "  the  sufferings  of  Christ  were 
agreeable  to  God."  "  If,  by  mere  pain,"  he  says,f  "  be 

*  Discourses  on  Atonement,  Park's  edition,  p.  31.        f  Page  35. 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  371 

meant  pain  abstracted  from  the  obedience  of  Christ,  I 
can  not  see  why  it  may  not  be  agreeable  to  God.  It 
certainly  is  in  the  damned  ;  and,  for  the  same  reason 
might  have  been,  and  doubtless  was  in  the  case  of  our 
Lord." 

To  pursue  this  particular  scheme  or  doctrine  farther 
appears  to  be  unnecessary,  after  we  have  found  it  laps- 
ing always  in  the  older  doctrine  it  undertook  to  qualify, 
or  displace.  To  this  older  doctrine  we  accordingly 
return. 

Here  it  is  conceived  that  God,  as  a  ruler,  must  exe- 
cute justice  because  he  is  just — if  not  upon  the  guilty, 
then  upon  Christ  their  substitute.  Jus-  Immutablc  Jus_ 
tice  he  must  have,  the  inexorable,  ever-  tiee  only  not  suffl- 
lasting  wrath  [op/*]]  of  his  judicial  nature  ciently  just* 
must  be  satisfied ;  and  as  it  was  to  be  satisfied  by  the 
penal  suffering  of  transgressors,  so  it  can  only  be  satis- 
fied, in  case  of  their  release,  by  a  full  compensation  of 
penal  suffering  offered  by  their  deliverer.  Now  if  it 
were  simply  conceived  that  God,  by  a  necessary,  ever- 
lasting charge  upon  his  moral  nature,  is  fated  to  be  the 
absolute  Nemesis  of  wrong, — unable  therefore  to  avert 
himself,  or  be  averted,  till  every  iota  and  least  speck  of 
it  has  gotten  its  full  desert — there  would,  at  least,  be  a 
certain  sublimity  in  the  conception.  But  there  is  no 
such  thought  as  that;  the  inexorable  justice  [wrath] 
wants  only  suffering  it  is  conceived  for  its  satisfaction, 
and  the  suffering  of  innocence  will  be  just  as  good  as 
the  suffering  of  guilt,  if  only  there  is  enough  of  it ; 


372  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

which  is  about  the  same  thing  as  to  say  that  God's  jus- 
tice is  so  immovably  set  on  having  its  due  of  pains  and 
penalties,  that  it  will  be  just  as  well  satisfied  in  having 
them,  apart  from  all  relations  of  justice.  There  was 
never  a  doctrine  that  more  obviously  broke  itself  down 
by  its  own  simple  statement.  Nor  is  it  any  wise  re- 
lieved, when  it  is  added  that  the  pains  and  penalties 
which  justice  obtains  for  satisfaction  are  not  exacted, 
but  yielded  by  consent ;  for  then  we  have  a  kind  of 
justice  under  all  most  sounding  epithets  of  majesty, 
immutable,  necessary,  sovereign,  which  is  yet  willing 
to  get  its  pains  and  penalties  by  contract ! 

I  ought  perhaps  to  say  that,  under  the  general  phra- 
seology of  this  doctrine,  there  appears  to  be  some  vari- 
Softenedorva-  ety  of  impression  indicated  by  a  soften- 
nod  forms  of  the  ing,  or  modified  definition  of  terms. 
Many  do  not  understand  by  God's  jus- 
tice any  vindictive  attribute  or  instinct  that  must  have 
satisfaction,  but  only  a  character  of  public  justice,  or 
general  justice,  that  is  necessary  to  be  maintained,  by  a 
firm  and  exact  distribution  of  penalty,  in  order  to  keep 
the  instituted  government  in  respect  and  authority. 
These  only  want  the  character  of  public  justice  made 
good,  by  some  other  expression — commonly  by  that  of 
abhorrence — when  that  which  is  made  by  punishment 
is  taken  away.  Some  can  not  satisfy  themselves  in 
what  manner  the  needed  compensative  expression  is 
made,  and  not  finding  how  to  explain  the  difficulties 
met,  'take  refuge  at  last  in  mystery — not  observing  that 
where  confessedly  nothing  is  known,  there  can  be  noth- 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  873 

ing  expressed.  These  lower,  softer  kinds  of  commuta- 
tion however  do  not  satisfy,  at  all,  the  more  logical, 
firmly  dogmatic  natures,  and  the  tendency  has  been, 
more  and  more  distinctly  of  late,  to  settle  into  what  are 
called  the  deeper  grounds  of  the  subject,  and  plant  the 
doctrine  in  the  soil  of  first  principle ;  viz.,  in  what  is 
conceived  to  be  the  eternal,  necessary  attribute  of  divine 
justice  itself. 

I  could  hardly  trust  myself  to  state  the  argument,  or 
vindication,  by  which  this  more  adequate  and  deeper 
doctrine  is  supposed  to  be  maintained  ;  and  therefore  I 
am  constrained  to  cite  the  language  of  two  late  writers 
of  distinction,  that  they  may  accurately  represent  them- 
selves and  their  view  of  the  subject.  I  do  it  for  no 
purpose  of  controversy,  but  only  to  obtain,  for  the  great 
matter  in  question,  the  easiest  and  surest  mode  of  set- 
tlement. 

Thus  it  is  formally  argued  by  a^  teacher  in  great  au- 
thority,* that — "  A  being  determined  by  considerations 
outside  of  Himself  [considerations  of 

Absolute  Jus- 
public  effect  for  example]    can   not  be   tice  how  to  be 

God.  It  is  essential  to  the  very  nature  conccived- 
of  God  that  he  be  independent  and  omniscient;  but 
with  these  attributes  a  determination  ab  extra  [as  where 
God  is  conceived,  in  the  death  of  his  son,  to  be  actuated 
by  considerations  of  public  law  and  authority,  and 
results  of  salvation  gained,  or  to  be  gained,  by  his  sac- 
rifice] is  utterly  and  forever  irreconcilable.  *  *  * 
Were  theologians  to  receive  this  first  truth  and  couple 

*  Biblical  Repertory,  A.  D.  1859,  pp.  474-5. 
32 


374  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

it  with  that  noble  utterance  with  which  the  Shorter 
Catechism  opens — *  Man's  chief  end,  etc.,'  they  would 
never  be  found  framing  theories,  which  would  strip 
God  of  his  justice  and  set  the  universe  [i.  e.,  the  benefit 
of  it]  above  the  throne  of  their  Creator.  *  *  * 
God  is  himself  the  highest  end  for  which  he  could  act." 
Now  it  is  very  true  that,  in  one  view,  there  is  and 
can  be  nothing  out  of  God,  and  that,  in  the  same,  he 
can  act  for  nothing  out  of  Himself.  It  is  also  true  that 
his  acts  and  purposes  are  not  for  things,  or  creatures 
taken  up  as  ends,  after  their  creation;  but  these  things 
and  creatures,  present  eternally  to  God's  thought  as 
possibilities,  in  Himself,  were  as  truly  his  ends,  before 
they  began  to  exist  externally,  as  they  could  be  after- 
ward. They  were,  in  fact,  as  truly  other  and  not  him- 
self, as  they  came  to  be  afterward.  For  them  and 
their  benefit  accordingly  he  has  eternally  acted.  To 
say  otherwise,  denying  that  he  can  have  ends  out  of 
himself,  under  the  supposed  Calvinistic  pretext  of  do- 
ing honor  to  his  sovereignty,  is  to  make  him  Allah  and 
not  God.  He  is  even  radically  unchristianized  in  his 
God  is  not  Ai-  perfections.  For  it  is  the  glory  of  God, 
lah  nevertheless.  tne  summit  even  of  his  glory,  that,  being 
sovereign,  he  knows,  not  justice  only,  but  self-sacrifice, 
and  is  so  sublimely  given  to  ends  out  of  Himself,  that 
he  can  even  be  a  suffering  God  in  his  feeling,  for  the  re- 
covery and  salvation  of  his  enemies.  Doubtless  he 
does  all  things,  in  a  sense,  for  his  own  glory ;  which  is 
only  saying,  if  we  speak  with  intelligence,  that  he  does 
all  things  to  make  the  luster  of  his  greatness  and  moral 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  375 

perfections  visible;  in  other  words  to  radiate  abroad 
his  love  and  goodness,  in  a  way  of  imparting  himself; 
which  is  to  all  created  minds  their  only  hope  of  perfec- 
tion and  complete  beatitude.  "We  are  brought  round 
thus,  in  fact,  upon  the  noble  conclusion  that  he  does 
every  thing  for  ends  ab  extra,  not  for  Himself.  The 
argument,  therefore,  that  God  must  have  the  everlasting 
anger  of  his  justice  satisfied,  because  he  is  acting 
wholly  for  Himself,  appears  to  be  about  as  repulsive,  in 
every  way,  as  any  thing  well  can  be.  It  even  makes 
the  grim  opyn,  or  vindictive  attribute,  to  be  itself  the 
summit  of  God's  perfections.  Insisting  that  he  must 
do  every  thing  for  himself,  nothing  for  any  public  ends 
of  benefit  and  blessing  to  creatures,  it  seems  even  to 
say,  what  certainly  can  not  be  meant,  that  his  very  per- 
fection is,  to  stand,  first  of  all,  for  the  satisfaction  of  his 
wrath,  and  kindle  his  glory  at  the  point  of  his  resent- 
ments ! 

Another  attempt  has  also  been  made,  in  quite ' 
another  quarter,  to  maintain  what  is  virtually  the  same 
ground,  only  it  is  done  by  a  more  inge-  Anothor  con 
nious  and  plausible  way  of  argument,  ception  of  Abso- 
Consenting  virtually  to  the  principle,  as  lnte  Justice- 
every  intelligent  thinker  must,  that  we  can  properly 
conceive  God  only  by  drawing  on  material  included  in 
our  own  human  consciousness,  the  writer  finds,  in  all 
"ethical  natures,"  whether  it  be  the  nature  of  God,  or 
of  man,  a  certain  prime  element  that  he  calls  "  Justice," 
and  which  is  instinctively  arrayed,  roused  to  vindic- 
tive energy,  against  all  wrong,  or  transgression.  This 


376  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

judicial  nature,  called  "justice,"  he  also  conceives  to  be 
the  point  absolute  in  moral  character.  This  must  stand, 
and  nothing  else  which  will  not  stand  with  it.  Thus 
he  says — * 

"  A  fundamental  attribute  of  Deity  is  justice.  This 
comes  first  into  view  and  continues  in  sight  to  the  very 
last,  in  all  inquiries  into  the  Divine  Nature.  No  attri- 
bute can  be  conceived  that  is  more  ultimate  and  central 
than  this  one.  This  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the  ope- 
ration of  all  the  other  divine  attributes,  love  not  ex- 
cepted,  is  conditioned  and  limited  by  justice.  For  what- 
ever else  God  may  be,  or  may  not  be,  he  must  be  just. 
It  is  not  optional  with  him  to  exercise  this  attribute, 
or  not  to  exercise  it,  as  it  is  in  the  exercise  of  that 
class  of  attributes  which  are  antithetic  to  it.  We  can 
say — '  God  may  be  merciful,  or  not,  as  he  pleases,'  but 
we  can  not  say,  'God  may  be  just  or  not  as  he  pleases.' 
It  can  not  be  asserted  that  God  is  inexorably  obligated 
to  show  pity  ;  but  it  can  be  categorically  affirmed  that 
God  is  inexorably  obligated  to  do  justly." 

His  all-conditioning,  first  attribute  of  justice  therefore 
must  have  "plenary  satisfaction"  he  maintains,  else 
there  can  be  no  deliverance.  The  condition ated  grace 
of  love  must  wait  on  the  unconditionated,  absolute  im- 
pulse of  justice,  and  drink  the  cup  of  its  indignations 
dry.  Thus  it  is  conceived  that,  "  In  the  incarnate  Son, 
God  voluntarily  endures  the  weight  of  his  own  judicial 
displeasure,  in  order  that  the  real  criminal  may  be 

*  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  Oct.,  1859.  Art.  IT — The  Atonement  a  Satisfac- 
tion for  the  Ethical  Nature  of  both  God  and  Man. 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  377 

spared.  The  Divine  compassion  itself  bears  the  inflic- 
tion of  the  Divine  indignation,  in  the  place  of  the 
transgressor.  The  propitiation  is  no  oblation  ab  extra, 
it  is  wholly  ab  intra,  a  self-oblation  upon  the  part  of 
Deity  itself,  by  which  to  satisfy  those  immanent  and 
eternal  imperatives  of  the  Divine  Nature,  which,  with- 
out it,  must  find  their  satisfaction  in  the  punishment  of 
the  transgressor."  "  Side  by  side  in  the  Godhead, 
there  dwell  the  impulse  to  punish  and  the  desire  to 
pardon  ;  but  the  desire  to  pardon  is  realized,  in  act,  by 
carrying  out  the  impulse  to  punish ;  not  indeed  upon 
the  person  of  the  criminal,  but  upon  that  of  his  substi- 
tute. And  the  substitute  is  the  Punisher  Himself." 

I  have  stated  thus  at  large  and  carefully  this  newly 
elaborated  scheme  of  satisfaction,  partly  because  it  has 
a  certain  point  of  merit,  and  partly  because  it  is  a  fail- 
ure where  a  sufficiently  strong  failure  was  wanted. 
The  point  of  merit  is  that  it  has  the  ingenuousness  to 
put  entirely  by  the  doubling,  battledooring  art  com- 
monly practiced  in  discussions  of  this  subject ;  it  does 
not  make  Christ  other  than  God,  that  he  may  offer 
something  to  God's  justice ;  and  then  a  divine  person 
[God]  that  he  may  be  able  to  offer  what  is  sufficient ; 
and  then  again  human  that  the  divine  may  not  suffer ; 
but  it  takes  the  ground  and  faithfully  adheres  to  it,  that 
the  satisfaction  made  is  wholly  ab  intra,  or  within  the 
divine  nature  itself.  The  point  of  failure  is  equally 
important,  because  it  brings  the  doctrine  of  penal  suf- 
fering and  judicial  satisfaction,  to  just  that  issue,  where 
its  failure  is  likely  to  be  final  and  conclusive. 

32* 


378  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

First  of  all,  the  ingenuous  admission,   here  made, 
that  the  justice  of  God  is  satisfied  from  within  Himself, 
or  by  punishment  dispensed  upon  Ilim- 
God  self,    is    even    admirably   fatal.      What 


exacts  of  him-  kind  of  power  any  Euler  must  hold,  in 
the  impressions  of  his  subjects  who,  to 
make  sure  of  justice,  takes  all  his  punishments  out  of 
himself,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see.  There  plainly  could 
not  be  a  weaker  figure  in  the  name  of  government. 

Besides  the  justice  gotten,  in  this  manner,  must  be  as 

insipid  to  Him,  as  it  is  useless  for  the  purposes  of  gov- 

ernment.    Justice  wants  what  is  just  if 

And  the  jus- 

tice is  not  just  it  wants  any  thing,  and  here  it  is  found 
beside.  feeding  itself  out  of  that  which  is  exactly 

not  just  —  what  vestige  of  justice  can  there  be  in  any 
punishment  which  a  righteous  God  gets  out  of  Him- 
self? Is  it  so  then,  after  all,  that  this  inexorable,  un- 
divertible,  Nemesis  of  God's  ethical  nature,  this  judi- 
cial sentiment  which  must  be  satisfied  first  and  before 
every  thing  else,  will  be  just  as  well  satisfied  with  a 
punishment  not  just,  as  with  one  that  is? 

There  also  appears  to  be  a  remarkable  oversight  here, 

in  the  scheme  of  satisfaction  proposed,  as  regards  the 

God  suffers—  Penal  suffering  itself.     "  The  Divine  corn- 

not  his  compas-   passion  itself  bears  the  infliction  of  the 

Divine  indignation  in  the  place  of  the 

transgressor."     Why  the  divine  compassion,  more  than 

the  divine  justice?     Does  the  justice  punish  the  com- 

passion ?     For  aught  that  appears  there  is  no  suffering 

in  the  compassion  more  than  in  the  justice.     By  sup- 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  379 

position,  the  truth  is,  merely,  that  there  is  a  conflict  be- 
tween the  two  contrary  impulses,  justice  and  compas- 
sion, and  the  divine  nature — not  specially  the  compas- 
sion, not  specially  the  justice — suffers.  These  words 
justice  and  compassion  do  not  as  having  each  distinct 
sensibilities  make  up  the  deity  ;  they  inhere  in  a  Being, 
and  that  being,  as  being,  suffers,  by  their  conflict. 
Does  it  then  satisfy  justice,  that  the  being  in  whom  it 
inheres,  suffers  partly  on  account  of  it? 

Besides,  if  it  were  conceivable  that  the  being  took  so 
much  suffering  wholly  on  his  love,  or  on  account  of  his 
love,  did  it  never  occur  to  the  writer  that 

Withheld  from 

if  He  had  refused,  for  love  s  sake,  to  en-  8UffCring  W0uia 
counter  so  much  suffering  he  would  cer-  havo  suffered 
tainly  have  suffered  infinitely  more? 
Nay,  that  such  a  refusal  would  even  have  turned  the 
Divine  bosom  itself  into  a  hell  of  suffering  forever? 
Given  the  fact  of  God's  Infinite  Love,  he  suffers 
demonstrably,  not  more,  but  less,  in  consenting  to  be 
the  deliverer  of  men — by  suffering  however  great. 

But  the  scheme  breaks  down  most  fatally  of  all  in 
the  confusion   of  meaning,  or  the  covering  up  of  a 
double  meaning,  in  the  word  justice.     A      The  Justice  con 
sufficient     discrimination    here    would   ceived  is  ambigu- 
have  shown  that  the  absolute  justice  c 
pertaining  to  ethical  natures  is  a  fiction,  without  any 
shadow  of  reality.     It  is  almost  incredible,  that  a  really 
intelligent  writer  should  throw  himself  upon  the  axiom, 
t(God  must  be  just,"  "God  is  inexorably  obligated  to 
do  justly,"  without  perceiving  that  we  assent  to  it  for 


380  GOD'S    RECTOR  AL    HONOR  PART  III. 

no  other  reason  than  that  the  words  "just"  and 
"justly  "  mean  "righteous"  and  "righteously."  God 
can  not  of  course  do  any  thing  unrighteous,  or,  in  that 
sense,  unjust;  that  is  God  must  keep  his  integrity.  IH 
that  the  same  thing  as  to  say  that  God  has  no  option  left, 
but  to  stand  by  retributive  justice  and  do  by  all  men 
exactly  as  they  do  to  others ?  Calling  "the  impulse  to 
punish"  justice,  has  he  no  liberty  left,  but  to  follow 
that  impulse,  just  as  far  as  it  must  go  to  be  exhausted? 
If  that  should  possibly  be  true,  it  will  require  some- 
thing more  to  establish  it  than  simply  to  propound  it  as 
an  axiom.  Interpose,  at  this  point,  two  very  simple 
distinctions  and  the  supposed  infallible  argument 
vanishes. 

First,  the  distinction  between  righteousness  and  JUB- 
tice ;  righteousness,  being  a  character  grounded  in  the 
Righteousness  absolute,  unconditioned  law  of  right 
and  Justice,  Wrath  existing  before  government ;  and  jus- 
tice, being  a  rectoral,  politico-judicial 
character,  maintained  by  the  firm  vindication  of  gov- 
ernment; conditioned  of  course  by  the  wants  of  gov- 
ernment. Second,  the  distinction  between  the  wrath- 
principle  and  justice ;  the  wrath-principle  being  only 
that  moral  sensibility,  or  passion,  that  impels  a  moral 
nature  to  the  infliction  of  evil  in  redress  of  wrong, 
and  steels  it  against  the  restraints  of  false  pity ;  and 
justice  being,  in  the  administration,  a  due  infliction  of 
such  evil,  according  to  the  ill  desert  of  the  wrong.  By 
the  first  distinction,  righteousness  is  seen  to  be  absolute, 
and  justice  to  be  a  matter  only  of  means  to  ends,  and 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  881 

so  of  deliberative  counsel.  By  the  second,  the  wrath- 
principle  is  seen  to  be  no  law  at  all,  but  only  an  im- 
pulse to  be  regulated  by  counsel ;  which,  when  it  is, 
makes  justice;  when  it  falls  short,  laxity;  when  it 
runs  to  excess,  revenge  and  cruelty.  I  have  the  same 
kind  of  ethical  nature  as  God,  and  it  is  even  a  praise  in 
me,  nay,  an  obligation  upon  me,  to  do  by  my  enemy 
better  than  he  deserves — to  forget  my  injuries  and  even 
to  suffer  for  his  good.  Is  it  then  a  fault  in  God  that  he 
does  the  same  ?  It  is  very  true  that  I  administer  no 
government  over  my  enemy,  and  so  for  there  is  a  differ- 
ence. But  this  difference  leaves  it  optional  with  God 
to  do  by  his  enemy  still  better  than  he  deserves,  when- 
over  he  can  do  it,  without  injury  to  the  public  interest 
of  government.  And  if  that  is  agreed,  where  is  the 
absolute,  all-conditioning,  unconditioned  justice-ele- 
ment of  his  nature — the  wrath  that  is  to  bridle  and  be- 
stride everlastingly  his  will  and  counsel  ?  Ceasing  in 
this  manner  to  call  righteousness  justice,  and  justice 
wrath,  the  claim  that  wrath  is  God's  first  attribute,  and 
must  be  satisfied,  is  seen  to  be  quite  groundless.  And 
the  supposed  adamantine  cup,  that  requires  to  be  kept 
exactly  full  of  blood,  to  let  forgiveness  into  the  world, 
is  happily  found  to  be  only  an  ambiguous  term  in 
speech  and  nothing  more ! 

It  will  occur  to  almost  any  one,  that  this  very  huge 
mistake  respecting  the  absolute  nature  of  justice,  origi- 
nates in  a  confounding  of  righteousness  and  justice. 
That  is  absolute,  unconditioned,  unconditional,  a  law  to 
all  moral  natures  and  even  to  God ;  a  law,  as  we  have 


382  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

seen,**  before  God  undertakes  to  so  much  as  organize  a 
government  for  it.     For  this  law  absolute,  the  govern- 

Righteousness  ment  of  God  Deluding  his  justice  only 
absolute,  not  jus-  maintains  guard,  just  as  guillotines  do 
for  statutes;  but  guillotines  are  not 
statutes  themselves,  neither  is  justice  the  same  as  the 
everlasting  law  of  right  whose  wrongs  it  avenges.  It 
was  not  the  thunderings,  and  the  lightnings,  and  the 
smoke,  and  the  sound  of  a  trumpet  that  were  engraved 
in  stones,  but  it  was  the  law.  Law  is  the  principal  and 
absolute  matter,  the  variable  and  conditional  is  what 
counsel  arranges  and  does  to  vindicate  law.f 

This  vindication  is  justice;  a  matter  of  proceeding, 

*  For  the  distinction  between  righteousness  and  justice,  See  Chap. 
I.,  Part  III. 

f  The  Hebrew  scriptures  have  a  way  of  putting  these  two  ideas 
righteousness  and  justice  together  that  is  instructive.  They  make  use  of 
two  distinct  sets  of  words,  one  that  is  morally  significant,  the  other  fo- 
rensically ;  and  it  is  remarkable  how  firmly  these  two  sets  of  words,  oc- 
curring almost  constantly  in  a  kind  of  twin  relationship,  keep  themselves 
to  their  places;  scarcely  ever,  or  quite  never  crossing  over  to  uses  that 
confuse  their  meaning.  Thus  we  have — "  righteousness  and  judgment " 
— "righteous  judgment" — "justice  [i.  e.,  righteousness]  and  judgment" 
— "just  [i.  e.,  righteous]  judgment" — "judgment  and  justice"  [i.e., 
righteousness] — with  a  great  variety  of  similar  combinations ;  where  it 
will  be  observed,  in  the  last  three  cases,  that  our  English  translation,  put- 
ting justice  and  just  in  the  place  of  righteousness  and  righteous,  makes  a 
considerable  look  of  confusion ;  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  words  just  and 
justice  are  so  often  used,  in  English,  in  the  judicial  and  vindicatory  sense. 
It  would  have  been  very  much  better  if  the  translation  had  excluded 
this  ambiguity,  by  steadily  representing  the  steadiness  of  the  original,  in 
a  use  only  of  the  words  righteous  and  righteousness,  and  reserving  the 
terms  just,  justice,  judgment  and  the  like,  for  the  other  class  of  uses,  the 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  383 

or  executive  counsel,  as  truly  as  the  fire  that  fell  on 
Sodom,  or  the  destruction  of  the  golden  calf.  Or  if  we 
use  the  epithet  as  a  word  of  character,  the  character  is 
not  original  and  absolute  in  God,  but  is  obtained  by 
doing  justice.  "Which  again  requires  to  be  done,  only 
because,  and  just  so  far  as,  it  is  means  to  ends  in  a  way 
of  maintaining  government;  not  because  God's  nature 
contains  a  wrath-principle  absolute,  that  must  be  exactly 
satisfied.  And  still  it  is,  with  many,  a  question  how  far, 
or  whether  in  fact  ever,  it  can  be  relaxed  ?  also  whether, 
if  relaxed  by  forgiveness,  it  must  not  be  somehow  com- 
pensated ?  And  they  even  go  so  far  as  to  be  sensitively 
concerned  for  God's  law,  if  he  is  conceived  to  let  go 
any  sin,  without  some  exact  equivalent  obtained.  To 
proclaim  a  free  remission,  without  some  such  equiva- 
lent, they  do  not  hesitate  to  say  would  quite  break 
down  his  government ;  he  might  be  a  good  adviser  still, 
they  will  say,  but  nothing  more — no  real  governor  at 
all. 

And  yet  we  can  easily  see  that  any  such  kind  of 
concern  is  theologic  with  us,  and  not  practical.  We 
do  not  practically  feel,  after  all,  that  in  Aflerali  have 
the  universal  free  remission  published  \>y  no  such  concern 
Christ,  God's  rectoral  authority  is  at  all  forGod'8J"8tice- 
weakened,  or  requires  any  new  buttress  of  support  to 
be  added.  And  the  probable  reason  is  that  the  im- 

vindicatory,  in  the  manner  observed  by  the  scripture.  Nobody  in  that 
case  would  ever  have  begun  to  imagine  that  retributive  justice  was  an 
original,  everlasting,  unconditioned,  first  principle  in  the  moral  nature  of 
God.  That  is  true  of  righteousness  only,  never  of  justice. 


384  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

mense  reinforcement  of  eternal  obligation  by  Christ's 
doctrine  of  future  punishment,  and  of  the  future  judg- 
ment by  himself,  puts  all  thought  of  concern  for  God's 
authority  so  far  away,  that  it  can  not  even  occur  to  us. 
We  find  ourselves  quivering  for  dread,  under  even  mercy 
itself.  The  necessity  of  some  compensation  made  to 
God's  justice  occurs  to  no  man,  save  in  a  way  of 
theory. 

Passing  now  into  another  field,  let  us  consider,  in  a 
way  more  positive,  what  Christ  has  really  done  that 
affects,  or  may  be  seen  to  affect,  the  interests  of  justice. 
The  remainder  of  the  chapter  will  be  occupied  with 
matter  that  I  could  well  enough  put  forward  as  a  way 
of  compensation ;  suffering  no  doubt  whatever  that  it 
would  be  more  satisfactory,  closer  to  the  problem  of 
compensation  itself,  and  more  genuine  than  the  others 
of  which  I  have  been  speaking.  But  I  shall  offer  it, 
instead,  simply  as  proof,  how  closely  God  adheres  to 
Jaw  and  justice  still  in  the  very  matter  of  vicarious 
sacrifice.  And  I  let  go,  in  this  wa}r,  what  might  be  a 
considerable  relief,  or  commendation  to  many,  just  be- 
cause I  have  too  little  respect  for  the  compensations,  to 
be  accessory,  in  any  way,  to  this  kind  of  wrong  against 
'the  simplicity  of  the  gospel.  These  compensations 
have  a  too  contrived  look,  and  suggest  too  easily  the 
ingenious  littleness  and  tumid  poverty  of  man's  inven- 
tion. I  would  rather  have  the  gospel  in  God's  way  of 
dignity  without  them,  than  to  have  it  in  a  guise  so  arti- 
ficial and  meager  without  the  dignity. 


CHAP.  VI.       E  F  F  E  C  T  I V  E  L  Y    M A  I X  T  A I N E  I) .  385 

It  lies  in  the  very  conception  of  vicarious  suffering  I 
am  giving  in  this  treatise,  that  Christ  is  entered  practi- 
cally into  the  condition  of  evil  and  made  chr}st  .g  in 

Subject  to  it.      This  condition,  tOO,  of  evil,    carnated  into  the 

we  shall  find  is,  in  some  very  important 
sense,  a  penal  condition.  It  is  what  is  called,  in  one  of 
the  epistles,  "the  curse;"  an  epithet  which  has  refer- 
ence, I  suppose,  indirectly,  if  not  formally,  to  the  ex- 
pulsion from  paradise  set  forth  in  the  third  chapter  of 
Genesis.  Not  that  the  sentence  there  passed  on  the 
guilty  pair,  and  on  the  world  for  their  sake,  was  any 
positive  infliction.  The  scriptures  very  commonly  rep- 
ivsent  what  occurs  retributively  under  fixed  laws  of 
nature  in  that  way ;  because  the  true  moral  idea  of 
God's  dealings  with  evil  is  best  conceived  in  that  way, 
by  minds  in  the  earlier  stages  of  development.  But  to 
us  the  effects  of  sin  are  its  curse,  and  the  laws  of  retri- 
bution, set  in  deep  and  firm  in  the  economy  of  nature 
itself,  are  God's  appointed  ministers  of  justice.  In  this 
manner  we  conceive  that  every  thing  up  to  the  stars — 
the  whole  realm  of  causes — is  arranged  to  be,  in  some 
sense,  the  executive  organ  of  God's  moral  retributions; 
Accordingly,  the  moment  any  sin  breaks  out,  all  the 
causes  set  against  it  fall  to  being  curses  upon  it.  As 
the  sin  itself  must  be  against  the  will  of  God,  and  every 
thing  created  centers  in  that  will,  a  shock  of  discord 
runs  through  the  general  frame-work  of  life  and  ex- 
perience. Order  itself  utters  a  groan  of  disorder.  The 
crystalline  whole  of  things  is  shattered,  as  it  were  by 
some  hard  blow,  and  the  fragments  begin  to  grind 

33 


GOD'S    RKCTOKAL    HONOR  PART  111. 

heavily  upon  each  other.    The  soul  itself,  lacerated  by 
wrong,  winces  for  pain,  like  an  eye  that  has  ex- 
tinguished sight  by   gazing  at  the  sun.     The  passions, 
appc  .irs,  aspirations  are  pitched  into  a  general 

quarrel  with  each  other,  and  especially  with  the  reason 
and  the  conscience;  and  the  will,  trying  to  usurp  con- 
trol of  all,  when  it  can  not  sufficiently  master  any 
thing,  falls  oft'  its  throne,  as  a  tyrant  plucked  down  by 
revolt  The  body  sutlers  a  like  shock  of  disorder,  and 
true  health  vanishes  before  t  t  crowd  of  i 

tions,  twinges,  and  immedicable  combustions,  that  steal 
into  the  flesh,  and  traverse  the  bones,  and  go  burn- 
ing along  the  nerves.  Evil  becomes  a  kind  of  organic 
power  in  society,  in  the  same  way  ;  a  kingdom  of  dark- 
ness, a  conspiracy  of  bad  opinions  and  powers  usurped 
for  oppression,  under  which  truth  and  goodness  and 
right  and  religion  itself  are,  either  badly  perverted,  or 
cruelly  i  \1.  The  very  world,  made  subject  to 

vanity,  groans  and  travails  every  where,  waiting  for 
tOW>  redemption  that  can  redeem  it  from  itself. 

Now  this  state  of  corporate  evil  is  what  the  scrip- 

tures call  the  curse  ;   and  it  is  directly  into  this  that 

Suffer*  the  cor-    Christ  is  entered   by   his  incarnation. 


evil   with   In  this  taking  of  the  flesh,  he  becoJMi 
a  true  member  of  the  race,  subject  to 
all  the  corporate  liabilities  of    his  bad  relationship. 
The  world  is  now  to  him  just  what  it  is  to  us;  save 
the  retributive  'causations  reach  him  only  in  a  pub- 
lic way,  and  never  as  a  sufferer  on  his  own  account 
He  is  even  depravated  or  damaged  in  his  human  con- 


v  VI.       EFFECi  I  VKI.Y    MAINTAINED.  |     ', 

htitution    just   so    far  as  that.    c< >nst il ut i< .11    is    humanly 
:iti\ «-.     l-w  he  was  the  Son,  not  of  :ni  immaculate, 

hut,  oi'  u  maculate    MM  »t  hei  IK  •<  ,<  I  ;    .  >t  h.-r\\  r  e    the    human- 

ity  assumed  were  only  a  dainty,  am  I  merely  ideal  em- 
bodiment, such  as  rather  mocks  our  sympathy  than 
draws  it.  Besides,  he  would  he  templed  in  all  points 
lil-.e  as  \VO  are,  and  :',uv  us  |()  •-V('  h«>w  In:  hrars  liiin 

III   OUT   lot.        Tlirtvioiv    \\r    |,«-|irVi'    hilll     tO    liaV^    clit<Tcd 

li   mlo  our  humanity,  just  as  it  is — into  tho  curse 
itself,  uiid.-r  \\lnch  it.    li< •:••.      .loiniii"    him -.-It'  to  us,  in    ;i 
.'•ipation   so   n-al  and  deep,  his  birth,  \ve  hall'  imag- 
ine, OOQling  \\iih  a  :  ho.'l,,  and  hear  strange  wail  hivak 
out  in  the  child's  lirst  cry.     Or  it'  this  lio   fancy  onJy 
and  not  fact,  \vc  can,   at    I- -a-  I.    B6    !'">•   our. .-elves   that, 
\vhcnhecomes  to  go  into  his  •.•real,  ministry,   in  tho 
Is  of  theciiiNc,  and    he   joined   to  all    the  corporate 
WOOH   and    judicial    disorders   of    the   curse,    ho    recoila 
with  a  shudder,  falls  olV  into  a  sharp  long  contest  of 
ing  and  temptation,   finally   to    nnergo    ns    from  a 
with    demons.*     In    this    struggle   and    victory 
his    ministry     bei-ms,   only     the     victory     does  not  an- 
nihilate,  or  more  than  simply  master  his  dreadful  re- 
pugnances.     \\'e   QflUQ  i   points  all  the  way  on, 
u  here  tho  pressure  of  his   lahor  does   not  occupy   and 
el  i  iiir,  th:.'  I  heavily  through 
storms  of  revulsion,  or  incipient  agony.     To  calm  such 
.  t  inues  all  night  in  prayer.     He  is  "  grieved,'1 
he  "  groans  in  spirit,"  ho  u  has  ft  baptism  to  be  baptized 
with"  and  he  is  "straitened  "  by  the  dreadful  pressure  of 

*  Christ  and  hw  Salvation,  pp.  94-1 1 1 


388  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

it,  till  it  be  accomplished.  He  is  "  troubled  in  spirit," 
he  cries  "  now  is  my  soul  troubled,"  and  finally,  when 
all  his  work  is  ended,  and  there  is  no  longer  any  active 
ministry  to  divert  or  occupy  his  attention,  he  sinks,  at 
once,  into  a  dreadful  superhuman  agony  and  horror  of 
darkness,  moaning  heavily — "My  soul  is  exceeding 
p sorrowful  even  unto  death!"  Now  in  all  these  incipi- 
ent agonies,  and  finally  in  the  last  great  agony  of  all, 
his  trouble  is  mainly  mental,  as  we  can  see  for  our- 
selves.* 

It  is  even  so  upon  the  cross,  where  he  dies,  physically 
speaking,  before  his  time,  because  of  the  more  dreadful 
moral  suffering  or  revulsion  that  was  on  him,  in  his 
felt  contact  with  the  curse  and  the  judicial  horrors  of 
evilf  Partly,  it  is  the  concern  he  feels  for  his  enemies, 
invoking  the  curse  of  his  blood  upon  themselves  and 
their  children ;  and  partly  it  is  the  baleful  shadow  that 

*This  fact  has  been  observed  by  others,  who  yet  have  not  regarded  his 
mental  suffering  as  proceeding  simply  from  his  love  vicariously  burdened 
for  the  world's  evils,  and  have  not  taken  his  redemption  as  accomplished 
by  his  moral  power  on  the  world.  Thus  Dr.  John  Pye  Smith  has  the 
insight  to  perceive,  that — "  The  fact  of  natural  death,  the  mere  ceasing 
to  live,  was  the  smallest  part  of  those  sufferings ;  it  was  their  termina- 
tion and  relief.  The  sorrow  which  he  endured  ineffably  transcended  all 
corporal  agony.  It  was  death  in  the  soul.  Our  moral  feelings  sin  has 
made  slow  and  torpid ;  so  that  we  can  form  none  but  very  faint  concep- 
tions of  the  load  of  distress  and  horror  which  passed  on  that  soul,  whoso 
unsullied  innocence  and  perfection  of  sensibility  were  without  an  equal 
in  all  human  nature.  He  suffered  all  that  a  perfectly  holy  man  could 
suffer,  but  the  highest  intensity  of  his  anguish  lay  in  that  which  was 
mental."  (Testimony  to  the  Messiah,  Yol.  II,  p.  343.) 

f  Christ  and  his  Salvation,  pp.  225-275. 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  389 

is  upon  every  thing — the  hour  of  darkness  and  judicial 
madness  that  is  on  his  crucifiers,  the  black  flag  hung 
over  the  sun,  and  the  geologic  under-world  shuddering 
horribly  for  their  crime. 

Thus  it  was  that  he  came  into  the  curse  and  bore  it 
for  us.  Not  that  he  endures  so  much  of  suffering  as 
having  it  penally  upon  him — he  has  no  such  thought — 
and  yet  he  is  in  it,  as  being  under  all  the  corporate  lia- 
bilities of  the  race.  He  had  never  undertaken  to  bear 
God's  punishments  for  us,  but  had  come  down  simply 
as  in  love,  to  the  great  river  of  retributive  causes 
where  we  were  drowning,  to  pluck  us  out ;  and  instead 
of  asking  the  river  to  stop  for  him,  he  bids  it  still  flow 
on,  descending  directly  into  the  elemental  rage  and 
tumult,  to  bring  us  away. 

Let  us  not  fail  now  to  observe  the  deliberate  respect 
he  pays  to  God's  instituted  government  and  law  in  this 
matter.  First,  that  having  all  miracu-  observe  what 
lous  power,  and  using  that  power  con-  honor  he  pays  to 
tinually  for  the  removing  of  diseases,  and  JUS 
sometimes  even  for  the  quickening  of  the  dead,  he 
steadily  refuses  to  use  it  for  the  rescue  of  his  person 
when  arrested  ;  or  the  confounding  of  his  adversaries, 
when  arraigned  ;  or  even  to  so  much  as  hurl  aside  the 
cross  and  his  crucifiers.  "  No,  let  sin  be  just  as  evil  and 
wild  as  it  will ;  society  just  as  cruel  to  all  that  are  in  it, 
me  included ;  just  as  visibly  accursed,  as  the  retributive 
order  of  God's  causes  requires  it  to  be."  And  again, 
secondly,  observe  that,  when  he  has  all  power  to  stop 
the  retributive  causes,  and  strip  away  the  whole  insti- 

33* 


390  GOD'S    11ECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

tuted  order  of  justice,  he  will  not  do  it — will  not  anni- 
hilate, or  suspend,  or  in  the  least  infringe,  any  single 
attribute  of  causation,  arranged  for  the  moral  discipline 
of  transgression.  As  he  will  not  discontinue  any  law 
of  nature  by  his  miracles,  he  will  not  do  it  for  the  de- 
liverance of  a  soul,  which  in  fact  is  much  less  than  a 
miracle.  He  is  a  being  strictly  supernatural,  and  his 
work  in  the  deliverance  of  transgressors  is  also  super- 
natural ;  but  in  coming  to  them,  in  their  thraldom,  to 
lift  them  out  by  his  divine  love  and  sympathy,  he  only 
masters  the  bad  causes,  but  does  not  stop  them.  It 
could  as  well  be  imagined  that  a  strong  magnet,  lifting 
its  iron  weight  into  the  air,  discontinues,  or  annihilates 
the  law  of  gravity.  Nothing  in  short  is  so  conspicu- 
ous, in  the  vicarious  suffering  and  death  of  Christ,  as 
the  solemn  deference  he  pays  to  God's  instituted  justice 
in  the  world,  and  even  to  the  causes  from  which  he 
comes  to  redeem. 

Whoever  then  is  pressed  with  the  necessity,   that 
some   ground   of  forgiveness  should  be  prepared  by 

Compensations    Christ>    ln    OI*der    tO    make    forgiveness 

enough,  were  com-  safe — some  compensation  made  to  law 

pensions  wanted.    ^  .^^  for  ^  ^  ^  mugt  guffe^ 

in  the  release  of  their  penalties — has  not  far  to  go  to 
find  the  matter  of  a  compensation  that  is  more  than 
sufficient.  Let  him  remember,  first,  the  tremendous 
artillery  sanctions  added  by  Christ,  in  his  two  really 
new  doctrines,  that  of  eternal  punishment  and  that  of 
his  coming  in  glory  to  judge  the  world;  and  then 
again  let  him  consider  Christ  in  his  whole  lifetime, 


CRAP.  VL       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  391 

wrestling  with  God's  retributions  upon  the  world,  him- 
self included  under  them,  and  finally  drinking  dry 
upon  his  cross  the  cup  of  judicial  madness  these  retri- 
butions mix  in  the  hearts  of  his  enemies ;  and  then, 
once  more,  let  them  note  how  he  carefully  refuses  to 
subvert  the  retributive  causalities  of  God's  judicial 
order  in  souls,  even  though  it  be  to  accomplish  their 
deliverance — let  him  bring  together  these  most  weighty 
tributes  of  honor,  added  by  Christ  to  the  majesty  of 
law,  and  whether  he  shall  call  them  compensations  or 
not  (for  it  makes  very  little  difference  by  what  name 
he  calls  them)  he  will  certainly  not  be  concerned  any 
more,  lest  God,  in  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  may  have 
sacrificed  the  honors  of  his  authority,  or  the  majesty 
of  his  justice.  All  this  too,  without  any  fiction  of  ab- 
horrence expressed,  justice  satisfied,'  official  transfer 
made  of  guilt,  official  substitution  suffered  in  the  mat- 
ter of  punishment.  There  is  no  theologic  shuffle,  in 
which  persons,  and  characters,  and  sentiments  of  right, 
and  dues  of  wrong,  are  confounded,  but  every  thing  is 
left  just  as  it  stands,  in  the  facts  of  the  history  ;  mak- 
ing its  own  impressions,  mocked  by  no  subtleties, 
weakened  by  no  moonshine  of  scholastic  science. 

As  I  have  made  much,  in  this  treatise,  of  the  suffer- 
ing element  in  Christ's  sacrifice,  regarding,  mainly  his 
moral  suffering,  and  that  as  an  expression  of  the  suffer- 
ing sensibility  of  God  towards  his  enemies ;  and  as  I 
have  just  now  magnified,  in  like  manner,  the  suffering 
of  Christ  under  the  retributive  and  corporate  evils  of 
the  curse,  I  ought  perhaps  to  make  some  reference  to  a 


392  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PAST  III. 

scheme  of  substitution,  or  compensation,  different  from 
the  others  of  which  I  have  spoken.  For  it  is  *a  some- 
what curious  fact,  that  we  have  a  late  treatise  of  our 
own — much  commended  and  really  more  deserving 
than  any  modern  treatise  I  have  seen — which  describeks 
a  mode  of  compensation,  executed  in  Christ,  where  the 
suffering  of  God  in  the  punishment  of  the  wicked,  is 
made  up,  or  substituted,  by  His  equal  suffering  in  the 
cross  of  Jesus.  It  does  not  appear  to  be  observed 
that  the  treatise  of  Mr.  Burge  has  this  peculiarity; 
but  he  states  very  distinctly  the  fact,  that 

Burge's   new  .  ,  . 

theory  of  com-   God,  in  his  punishments,  evinces  his  re- 
pensation  by  di-  spect  for  ^s  ]aWj  by  the  amount  of  evil 

vine  suffering.  . 

he  is  seen  to  endure  in  those  punish- 
ments; and  then  proceeds — "By  God's  submitting  to 
an  evil,  is  meant  his  consenting  that  a  thing  should 
take  place,  which  must  be,  in  its  own  nature,  disagreea- 
ble to  his  benevolent  heart,  if  received  independently 
of  all  other  things.  The  misery  of  mankind,  which 
would  have  been  the  effect  of  the  execution  of  the  law, 
would  have  been  such  an  evil.  *  *  *  If  then  the 
sufferings  of  Christ  were  really  an  evil  in  the  sight  of 
God,  and  he  submitted  to  them  on  account  of  his  law, 
it  must  be  evident  that  they  are  sufficient  to  show  re- 
spect for  his  law.  These  sufferings  must  have  been  an 
evil  of  very  great  magnitude.  Hence,  for  God  to  sub- 
mit to  such  an  evil  on  account  of  his  law,  must  be  a 
manifestation  of  respect  to  it  exceedingly  great."*- 

*The    Atonement,    Discourses    and  Treatises,    by  Prof.   Park,   pp. 
458-60. 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  393 

We  seem  to  be  coming  out  here  upon  a  scheme  of 
compensation,  which,  at  least,  involves  no  offense  to 
our  natural  sentiments  of  right;  but  the  prospect 
vanishes  too  soon  to  allow  us  any  space  for  congratula- 
tion. The  little  clause  "  on  account  of  his  law,"  will 
be  observed  in  the  language  cited  ;  and  the  implication 
is  that  Christ  must  needs  suffer,  on  account  of  the  law, 
in  order  that  God's  suffering  for  him  and  with  him 
should  go  to  the  same  account  with  the  suffering 
He  would  undergo  in  punishment.  And  then,  regard- 
ing the  suffering  of  Christ  as  being  somehow  on  ac- 
count of  the  law,  the  argument  goes  off  upon  the 
revealing  of  God's  "  opposition  to  sin,"  and  his  "  dis- 
pleasure against  sinners,"  ending  virtually,  after  all,  in 
a  way  of  compensation  by  abhorrence  as  it  is  com- 
monly held.  If  Mr.  Burge,  perceiving  the  full  import 
and  merit  of  the  conception  he  began  with,  could  have 
had  the  firmness  not  to  be  swerved  from  his  point  by 
deference  to  existing  opinions,  his  new  base  of  compen- 
sation, by  which  one  kind  of  moral  suffering  in  God  is 
substituted  by  another,  would  have  allowed  him  to  erect 
a  complete  superstructure  of  his  own,  and  one  that 
should  be  nowise  revolting  to  right.  But  he  seems  to 
have  not  conceived  the  fine  possibility  it  gave  him. 

• 

In  the  general  view  I  have  thus  given  of  the  com- 
pensations, and  especially  in  taking  the  position  that 
God's  law  and  justice  are  sufficiently  vindicated  in 
Christ,  saying  nothing  of  compensations  at  all,  I  antici- 
pate two  objections — 


394  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

1st  Obj.  That  the  Christian  world  is  unanimous  in 
the  belief  that  Christ  has  offered  a  compensation  to  the 

Christian   world    JUStlCe  °f  G°d>    and   that   Slldl   COmpen- 

unanimous  for  sation  is  necessary,  as  a  ground  for  the 
compensation.  forgiveness  of  sins.  There  is  some 
truth  in  this,  and  I  have  no  pleasure  in  a  raising  a  con- 
flict with  any  so  generally  accepted  faith  or  opinion. 
But  I  have  (1.)  made  up  as  large  an  account  of  com- 
pensations as  any  one  can  desire,  if  a  compensation 
must  be  provided  ;  and  (2.)  I  have  it  to  say,  that  what- 
ever agreement  there  may  be  in  respect  to  the  need  of 
a  compensation,  there  is  no  agreement  as  to  the  mode ; 
and  (3.)  that,  for  the  first  thousand  years  of  the  church, 
there  was  nothing  said  of  any  compensation  at  all,  ex- 
cept that  the  suffering  death  of  Christ  was  a  compensa- 
tion paid  to  the  devil ;  and  (4.)  that  Anselm,  at  whom 
this  notion  of  a  compensation  to  God  begins,  only 
makes  up  an  argument  in  which  Gocl's  violated  honor 
is  compensated  by  the  obedience  unto  death  of  his  in- 
carnate Son,  conceiving  the  fact  of  no  compensation  at 
all  to  God's  justice  or  the  want  of  any — much  as,  in 
the  previous  chapter,  I  have  shown  what  honor  God 
has  put  upon  the  law-precept,  by  Christ's  obedience, 
and  here  upon  the  penalty,  by  his  incarnate  submission 
to  the  curse  or  the  natural  retributions  of  God.  How 
much  is  left  of  the  objection  after  a  specification  like 
this,  I  am  not  anxious  to  inquire. 

2d  Obj.  That  the  view  here  advanced  will  not  satisfy 
the  strong  substitutional,  or  imputational  phrases  ap- 
plied to  Christ  in  the  scripture.  Exactly  contrary  to 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  395 

this,  I  am  clear  in  the  conviction,  that  it  has  the  partic- 
ular merit  of  giving  to  all  such  forms  of  scripture  ex- 
pression, their  most  easy  and  genuinely  Substitutions! 
natural  meaning,  and  that,  without  doing  phrases  of  scrip- 
any  offense  to  the  standards  of  our  moral  * 
nature.  There  is  a  kind  of  legerdemain,  or  word-shuf- 
fle practice,  in  such  phrases  ;  by  which  Christ  is  shown 
to  be  set  in  the  very  condition,  or  it  will  even  be  said 
in  the  very  guilt  of  sinners,  having  their  sins  really  put 
upon  him,  to  be  answered  for  by  him  in  suffering  be- 
fore God's  justice,  and  to  satisfy  that  justice.  If  it 
were  necessary  to  reason  with  attempts  that  are  them- 
selves even  shocking  violations  of  reason,  it  should  be 
enough,  to  say,  that  Christ  is  either  really  in  the  lot  of 
ill  desert,  or  else  he  is  not.  If  he  is  there,  then  he 
ought  to  suffer ;  and  if  he  is  not,  then  it  is  the  greatest 
wrong  and  irreverence  to  pretend  that  he  suffers  justly. 
I  have  dared  to  say  that  he  is  not  there,  and  suffers 
nothing  as  justly  due  to  himself.  He  only  comes  into 
the  corporate  evil  of  sin,  as  being  incarnated  into 
humanity,  and,  working  there  to  recover  men  away, 
both  from  sin  and  punishment,  he,  for  so  long  a  time, 
encounters  and  suffers  the  curse  they  are  justly  under. 
This  he  does,  not  to  satisfy  God's  justice,  but  in  a  way 
of  coming  at  their  consciences  and  hearts ;  whereupon 
it  results  that  they,  being  released  or  recovered,  by  so 
great  expense  of  suffering  and  sacrifice,  give  him  their 
testimony  of  thanks,  in  the  most  natural  way  possible, 
by  telling  how  he  "was  made  a  curse  for  them,"  "bore 
their  sins  in  his  own  body,"  "gave  himself  for  them," 


396  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

"  was  made  sin  for  them,"  "  gave  himself  to  be  their  ran- 
som," "died  for  them,"  "suffered  the  just  for  the  un- 
just." 

The  case  is  one  we  can  not  parallel,  but  suppose — no 
matter  if  the  like  was  never  heard  of — that  some  state, 

An  illustration  the  Roman  for  example,  has  contrived 
of  the  substitutive  a  prison  for  the  punishment  of  public 
malefactors,  on  the  plan  of  an  ordeal  by 
Providence.  The  prison  is  placed  in  the  region  of 
some  deadly  miasma,  that  we  will  say  of  the  campagna ; 
the  design  being  to  let  every  convict  go  free,  after  some 
given  numbers  of  years  are  passed ;  on  the  ground  that, 
being  still  alive,  he  must  have  learned  to  govern  him- 
self for  so  long  a  time,  and  is  also  marked  for  life  and 
liberty  by  the  acceptance  of  Providence.  The  fell 
poison  of  the  atmosphere  decimates,  of  course,  the 
number  of  the  prisoners,  almost  every  week.  Finally 
it  comes  to  the  knowledge  of  a  certain  good  monk  of 
the  city,  who  has  learned  to  follow  his  Master,  that  a 
notable  prisoner  who,  a  long  time  ago,  was  his  bitter 
private  enemy,  begins  to  show  the  working  of  the 
poison,  and  is  giving  way  to  the  incipient  burnings  of 
the  fever.  Whereupon  the  godly  servant  says  "  this 
man  was  my  enemy,  and  for  Christ's  sake  I  must  go  to 
him,  trying,  if  I  can,  to  save  him."  Becoming  thus 
the  prisoner's  faithful  nurse  and  attendant,  he  is  recov- 
ered and  goes  free,  and  the  benefactor  takes  the  infec- 
tion and  dies.  And  now  the  rescued  man  throws  out 
his  soul  on  words,  trying  vainly  to  express  the  inex- 
pressible tenderness  of  his  obligation.  He  writes,  and 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINE 

talks,  and  sings,  nothing  but  gratitude,  all 
telling  how  the  Christly  man  saved  him,  by  what 
poor  figures  he  can  raise.  "0  he  bore  my  punish- 
ment"— "became  the  criminal  for  me " — "gave  his  life 
for  mine  " — "  died  that  I  might  live  " — "  stood  in  my  lot 
of  guilt  " — "suffered  all  my  suffering."  It  will  not  be 
strange,  if  he  should  even  go  beyond  scripture  and  tes- 
tify in  the  fervors  of  his  homage  to  so  great  kindness — 
"he  took  my  debt  of  justice" — "satisfied  the  claims 
of  justice  for  me;"  for  he  will  mean,  by  that,  nothing 
more  than  he  has  meant  by  all  he  has  been  saying  before. 
Then,  after  a  time,  when  he  and  his  benefactor  are 
gone,  some  one,  we  will  imagine,  undertakes  to  write 
their  story;  and  the  dull,  blind-hearted  literalizcr  takes 
up  all  these  fervors  of  expression,  in  the  letters  and  re- 
ported words  of  the  rescued  felon,  showing  most  con- 
clusively from  them,  that  the  good  monk  actually  got 
the  other's  crime  imputed  to  him,  took  the  guilt  of  it, 
suffered  the  punishment,  died  in  his  place,  and  satisfied 
the  justice  of  the  law  that  he  might  be  released !  Why 
the  malefactor  himself  would  even  have  shuddered,  at 
the  thought  of  a  construction  so  revolting,  hereafter  to 
be  put  upon  his  words !  The  honors  won  for  Christian 
theology,  by  this  kind  of  interpretation  put  upon  the 
free  words  of  scripture,  make  a  very  sad  figure,  and  are 
better  to  be  lost  than  preserved.  I  do  not,  to  speak 
frankly,  know  a  passage  of  scripture,  that  can  with 
any  fairness  be  turned  to  signify  a  legal  or  judicial 
substitution  of  Christ,  in  the  place  of  transgressors — 
none  that,  taken  with  only  a  proper  Christian  intelli- 

34 


398  GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  III. 

gerice,  can  be  understood  as  affirming,  either  the  fact, 
or  the  necessity,  of  a  compensation  made  to  God's  jus- 
tice, for  the  release  of  sin. 

If  now  we  take  the  material  of  this  and  the  two  pre- 
vious chapters,  apart  from   any  thought  or  proposed 
These  law  factors   scheme  of  compensation  for  the  release 

necessary,   in    the    of  punis]imeut    we   can  not    fail   to    see 
moral-power    con- 
struction   of    the    the    immense  importance  and  absolute 

g°sPeli  integral  necessity  of  it,  in  a  gospel  that 

proposes  to  quicken  and  spiritually  restore  the  world. 
Not  even  the  transcendent  moral  power  over  mankind, 
which  Christ  has  obtained  by  his  incarnate  life  and  sac- 
rifice, can  have  any  sufficient  sway,  save  as  it  is  com- 
plemented, authenticated,  and  sharpened  into  cogency, 
by  the  sturdy  law-work  of  these  three  chapters. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  in  the  history 
of  Christian  doctrine,  that  what  the  critical  historians 
call  the  "moral  view  "  of  the  atonement,  in  distinction 
from  the  expiatory,  has  been  so  persistently  attempted, 
and  so  uniformly  unsuccessful.  The  discouragements 
of  failure  appear  to  signify  nothing  ;  still  the  attempt  is 
renewed,  age  after  age,  as  if  pushed  on  by  some 
sublime  fatality  that  can  not  be  resisted.  And  what 
shall  we  see  in  this  sublime  fatality,  but  the  felt  pres- 
sure of  truth,  thrusting  on  attempts  to  issue  the  truth 
in  some  right  form?  What  also  shall  we  see  in  so 
great  persistency  under  failure,  but  a  pledge  of  final 
success?  And  we  are  the  more  confident  of  this,  in 
the  revision  of  these  three  chapters,  that  we  are  able  so 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  399 

clearly  to  see,  why  the  attempts  at  a  moral  construc- 
tion of  the  sacrifice,  such  as  have  heretofore  been  made, 
should  have  failed.  They  have  been  partial,  they  have 
not  included  matter  enough  to  make  any  complete  gos- 
pel, or  to  maintain  any  permanent  hold,  as  a  power,  in 
men's  convictions.  They  begin  to  wane  as  they  begin 
to  live,  and  shortly  die  for  want  of  any  complete  appa- 
ratus of  life.  One  proposes  Christ  as  an  example. 
Another  imagines  that  his  work  is  exhausted  in  cor- 
recting  the  superstition,  or  false  opinion,  that  God  will 
not  forgive  sin ;  and  so  allowing  God's  paternity  to  be 
accepted.  Another  shows  him  to  be  the  teacher  of  a 
divine  morality  that  must  needs  restore  the  world. 
Another  beholds,  in  his  life  and  death,  the  manifested 
love  of  God.  Others  follow  in  varieties  that  combine 
some,  or  all,  of  the  proposed  modes  of  benefit,  and  fill 
out,  as  they  conceive,  the  more  complete  account  of  his 
moral  efficacy.  The  inherent  weakness  of  all  such 
versions  of  the  gospel  is,  that  they  look  to  see  it  ope- 
rate by  mere  benignities — something  is  either  to  be 
shown  or  done,  that  is  good  enough  to  win  the 
world. 

The  one  fatal  defect  that  vitiates  all  such  conceptions 
and  puts  them  under  a  doom  of  failure  is  that  they  make 
up  gospel  which  has  no  law  side  of  authority,  penal  en- 
forcement, rectoral  justice;  nothing  to  take  hold  of 
an  evil  mind  at  the  point  of  its  indifference  or  averse- 
ness  to  good,  nothing  to  impress  conviction,  or  shake 
the  confidence,  or  stop  the  boldness  of  transgression. 
Doubtless  it  is  something  great,  a  wonderful  and  chief 


400  ,    GOD'S    RECTORAL    HONOR  PART  HL 

element,  that  Christ  unbosoms  the  Suffering  Love  of 
God,  and  obtains  a  name  and  power,  in  that  manner,  so 
transcendent ;  and  yet  not  even  he  himself  appears  to 
put  this  captivating  figure  first  in  order,  in  the  working 
plan,  or  economy  of  his  gospel.  On  the  contrary,  we 
may  distinctly  see,  when  he  comes  to  the  end  of  his 
ministry,  that  he  expects  the  dispensation  of  the  Spirit 
now  to  begin,  as  he  retires,  in  a  cogent,  piercing,  fear- 
fully appalling  work,  that  is  far  as  possible  from  any 
thing  captivating  or  benignant.  And  yet  even  this 
will  be,  in  a  sense,  by  him  and  by  his  cross.  "  And 
when  he  is  come  he  shall  reprove  the  world  of  sin,  of 
righteousness,  and  of  judgment  to  come."  How  of 
sin?  "because  they  believe  not  on  me."  How  of 
righteousness  ?  "  because  I  go  to  the  Father  and  ye  see 
me  no  more."  How  of  judgment?  "  because  the  prince 
of  this  world  is  judged."  In  these  thunders  he  will  be 
revealed,  and  by  these  mighty  shocks  of  inward  con- 
vulsion, he  will  open  a  passage  for  his  love  and  beauty 
to  enter.  For  what  honor  is  there  on  the  precept  of 
God's  law,  when  Jesus  personates  it  in  his  life!  and 
how  dreadfully,  visibly,  base  is  the  sin,  that  can  attack 
that  life  and  do  a  deed  of  murder  on  it!  Well  might 
the  poor  maddened  multitude,  overwhelmed  by  unut- 
terable convictions  of  wrong  in  what  they  have  done, 
go  home  smiting  on  their  breasts  !  And  the  righteous- 
ness of  God — what  opinion  shall  they  have,  now,  either 
of  it,  or  of  themselves,  when  they  conceive  him  ascending 
to  the  Father  ?  He  came  out  from  the  righteousness  of 
God,  verily  he  lived  it  in  the  world,  and  now  he  has 


CHAP.  VI.       EFFECTIVELY    MAINTAINED.  401 

gone  up  clad  in  its  honors  to  reign.  And  the  justice 
of  God — what  is  now  so  visible,  as  that  the  cross  itself 
is  God's  mightiest  deed  of  judgment  ?  for  here  goes 
down,  as  by  a  thunderstroke,  the  prince  of  this  world— * 
all  the  organically  dominating  powers  of  evil ;  its  fash- 
ions, its  pride,  its  pomps  of  condition,  its  tremendous 
codes  of  false  opinion,  all  its  lies,  all  its  usurpations. 
These  overgrown  tyrannies  upon  souls  are  hurled,  like 
Dagon,  to  the  ground ;  and  Pilate  and  the  priests,  and 
the  senators,  and  the  mob,  and  the  soldiers,  are  all  seen 
choking  in  dumb  silence,  before  the  cross  and  the  judg- 
ment-day quaking  and  blackness  of  the  scene.  Poor 
sinning  mortals  1  how  weak  do  they  look !  how  like  to 
culprits  judged! 

In  all  which  we  have,  according  to  the  conception  of 
Christ  himself,  what  exactly  corresponds  to  the  matter 
of  these  three  rugged  chapters  of  government.  Ex- 
pecting, as  he  does,  to  draw  all  men,  by  the  captivating 
love  and  grace  of  his  sacrifice,  he  has  no  such  thought 
as  that  the  moral  power  of  his  life  will  do  any  thing  by 
itself.  There  must  be  law,  conviction,  judgment,  fear, 
taking  hold  of  natures  dead  to  love,  and  by  this  nec- 
essary first  effect,  preparing  a  way  for  love.  No  ef- 
fective and  firm  hold  of  the  world  as  world,  does  he  even 
hope  to  get,  save  as  he  breaks  the  shell  of  the  world's 
audacity  and  blunted  feeling,  by  these  piercing  rigors 
of  conviction — doing  visibly  and  suffering  all  that  he 
does  and  suffers,  in  a  way  to  honor  the  precept,  enforce 
the  penalty,  and  sanctify  the  justice  of  law ;  the  pre- 
cept as  right,  the  penalty  as  righteous,  the  justice  as  the 

34* 


402  GOD'S  RECTORAL  HONOR,   ETC.      PART  III. 

fit  vindication  of  the  righteousness  of  God.  No  moral- 
view  account  of  his  gospel,  separated  from  this,  can  be 
any  thing  but  a  feeble  abortion.  In  this  firm  conjunc- 
tion, his  wonderful  life  and  the  name  he  has  obtained, 
which  is  above  every  name,  become  the  power  of  God 
unto  salvation — thus  and  not  otherwise. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

JUSTIFICATION  BY  FAITH. 

AND  yet  the  great  Moral  Power  obtained  by  Christ 
for  the  reconciliation  of  men  to  God,  fortified  and  but- 
tressed by  these  vigorous  law-factors  of  which  I  have 
been  speaking,  is  obviously  still  no  absolute  or  com- 
plete power,  as  regards  the  result  proposed.  No  moral 
power  ever  goes  to  its  mark  in  that  way.  The  force  or 
fiat-power  of  God  strikes  directly  through,  by  its  own 
cogency,  but  his  moral  power  works  only  by  induce- 
ment; that  is,  by  impressions,  or  attractions  that  may 
be  resisted :  for  it  is  not  one  of  the  pos- 

MoraL    power 

sibilities,  that  character  should  be  struck  supposes  the  con- 
out,  by  any  exterior  action  that  does  not  8 
act  through  choice  or  faith,  in  the  subject.  That  would 
be  not  only  a  miracle,  but  a  morally  absurd  miracle. 
Moral  power  therefore,  acting  by  itself,  always  falls  in- 
evitably short  of  the  result  proposed,  appearing  thus,  in 
one  view,  to  be  scarcely  any  real  power  at  all.  The 
grandest,  most  ineffable  kind  of  power — in  Christ  a 
glory  most  visibly  divine  or  deific — it  still  bears  a  look 
of  insufficiency,  whenever  it  moves  on  a  moral  nature 
that  will  not  suffer  it  to  be  sufficient.  But  where  it 
wins  consent,  or  faith,  it  is  not  so ;  there  it  is  visibly, 


404  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

consciously  power,  bearing  some  of  the  highest  attri- 
butes of  sovereignty ;  even  transforming  the  subject  all 
through,  in  the  deepest  secrets  of  impulse;  creating,  as 
it  were,  new  possibilities  of  character,  new  springs  of 
liberty  in  good.  Beginning  in  the -plane  of  induce- 
ment, or  attraction,  it  no  sooner  wins  consent,  or  faith, 
than  it  becomes  inspiration ;  bearing  the  soul  up  out  of 
its  thraldom  and  weak  self-endeavor,  to  be  a  man  new- 
born, ranging  in  God's  freedom,  and  consciously  glori- 
ous sonship. 

And  this,  if  I  am  right,  is  the  very  greatest  thing 
done  below  the  stars,  evincing  the  greatest  power.  The 
subject  is  reconnected  herein  with  the  divine  nature, 
atoned,  reconciled  with  God,  transformed  by  the  inward 
touch  of  God's  feeling  and  character.  This,  if  any 
thing,  is  power,  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation.  Only 
it  is  by  the  supposition  a  salvation  by  faith.  Winning 
faith,  it  works  by  the  faith  it  wins;  and  so,  being 
trusted  in,  it  makes  the  trust  a  new  footing  of  life  and 
character. 

Now  it  is  this  new  footing  of  faith,  or  salvation  by 
faith,  which  the  New  Testament  Scriptures  call  JUSTI- 

Justifieation   by    FICATIOKT    BY    FAITH.       Not    that    men 

faith  is  the  result  were  never  justified  by  faith  before — 
they  were  never  justified  in  any  other 
way,  never  saved  on  any  other  footing.  The  Old  Tes- 
tament saints,  and  as  truly  the  outside  saints,  of  whom 
I  believe  there  have  been  many  besides  Jethro  and  Job 
and  Cornelius,  were  all  justified  by  faith.  They  were 
such  as,  not  knowing  Christ,  trusted  themselves  practi- 


CHAP.  VII.        JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  405 

cally  to  God  as  their  Helper  and  Keeper;  or  not 
knowing  God,  trusted  themselves  implicitly  to  some 
supernatural  Helper  felt  to  be  near,  and  accepted  as 
their  Unknown  Friend.  We  only  speak  of  justification 
by  faith  in  Christ,  as  a  new  footing  of  salvation,  because 
there  is  such  a  power  obtained  for  God,  by  the  human 
life  and  death  of  Christ,  and  the  new  enforcements  of 
his  doctrine,  as  begets  a  new  sense  of  sin,  provokes  the 
sense  of  spiritual  want,  and,  when  trust  is  engaged,  cre- 
ates a  new  element  of  advantage  and  help,  to  bring  the 
soul  up  into  victory  over  itself  and  seal  it  as  the  heir 
of  God  And  thus  it  is,  or  in  a  sense  thus  qualified, 
that  we  speak  of  justification  by  faith,  as  the  grand  re- 
sult of  Christ's  work,  and  the  all-inclusive  grace  of  his 
salvation. 

Holding  this  view  of  Christ  and  his  gospel,  we  can 
see  beforehand,  that  justification  by  faith  will  even  be 
a  principal  matter  of  Christianity :  and 

.i  '  Practical  faiJh 

then  it  will  not  be  strange,  if  some  and  church  opin- 
should  glorify  it  more  as  an  idol  of  ion  may  not  wholly 

_  coincide. 

dogmatic  opinion,  and  others  more  as  a 
footing  of  grace  and  divine  liberty.  It  will  be  dear  to 
many,  living  in  their  heads  and  supervising  the  gospel 
as  thinkers,  because  it  is  the  articula  stantis  vel  cadentis 
ecclesice ;  but  a  great  deal  more  dear,  to  a  much  greater 
number,  as  the  point  where  Jesus  practically  meets 
their  want,  and  becomes  a  new  celestial  confidence  in 
their  faith.  What  however  it  means,  may  not  be  very 
exactly  understood  or  agreed,  between  those  who  prize 
it  as  a  church  article,  and  those  who  value  it  as  the  new 


406  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  IIL 

footing  and  spring  of  their  spiritual  liberty — the  justi- 
fication of  life.  Nay,  it  will  not  be  strange,  if  some 
whose  souls  are  most  kindled  by  the  grace  of  it,  should 
nevertheless  make  a  church  article  of  it  that  is  quite  in- 
consistent, or  even  revolting.  In  my  present  chapter, 
therefore,  I  shall  endeavor  to  gather  in  what  light  I  can 
from  the  previous  chapters,  upon  this  truly  principal 
matter  of  the  Christian  salvation. 

The  single  text  of  Scripture  at  which  the  doctrine 
begins,  and  in  which,  we  may  almost  say  that  it  ends, 

The  principal  though  hundreds  of  other  passages 
text  discussed,  "bring  in  their  consenting  evidence,  is 
the  much  debated  testimony  of  Paul* — "Whom  God 
hath  set  forth  to  be  a  propitiation,  through  faith  in 
his  blood,  to  declare  his  righteousness  in  the  remission 
of  sins  that  are  past,  through  the  forbearance  of  God ; 
to  declare,  I  say,  at  this  time,  his  righteousness,  that  he 
might  be  just,  and  the  justifier  of  him  which  believeth 
in  Jesus." 

The  first  clause  of  the  passage,  relating  to  propitia- 
tion, will  be  considered  more  properly  in  another  chap- 
ter. At  present,  our  concern  is  to  settle  the  true  mean- 
ing of  the  remaining  part,  relating  to  the  righteousness 
of  God,  and  the  dispensation  of  his  justifying  mercy. 

The  mere  English  reader  will  not  know,  that  the 
three  words  here  occurring,  righteousness,  just,  and  justi- 

The  three  words  fier  <?/— noun,  adjective,  and  participle 
all  of  one  family.  — are  aj}  WOrds  of  the  same  root  in  the 
original,  and,  of  course,  are  as  closely  related  in  mean- 

*  Romans  iii,  25-6. 


CHAP.  YH.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  407 

ing,  as  they  can  be  in  so  many  different  parts  of  speech, 
that  are  grammatical  offshoots  of  the  same  root.  In- 
formed of  this,  he  will  ask,  at  once,  why  the  three 
words  are  not  translated  so  as  to  preserve  the  impres- 
sion of  their  kinship? — thus  to  read,  either  "the  right- 
eousness of  God,"  "  that  he  may  be  righteous  and  make 
righteous,"  or  else,  the  "justice  of  God,  that  he  may  be 
just  and  the  justifier  of" — so  to  reflect  the  apostle's 
meaning,  in  the  exact  one  color  he  gave  it,  by  his  three 
co-relative  words  in  the  Greek  ?  I  hardly  know  what 
answer  to  make  to  this  question,  unless  it  be  that  the 
text  had  been  already  warped,  by  a  dogmatic  construc- 
tion, before  the  translation  was  made.  This,  however, 
is  not  quite  certain ;  for  the  latter  class  of  words  from 
the  Latin— justice,  just  and  justify — are  commonly 
used  in  the  translation  in  precisely  the  same  meaning 
as  the  former  class  from  the  Saxon — righteousness, 
righteous  and  make  righteous.  I  say  "commonly 
used,"  but  they  are  not  always  so  used;  for  the  Ro- 
mans had  two  senses,  very  distinct  from  each  other, 
when  they  spoke  of  justice.  They  were  a  very  in- 
tensely legal  people,  and  they  sometimes  meant  by  jus- 
tice, justice  under  political  analogies — vindicatory  and 
forensic  justice — and  sometimes  justice  in  the  moral 
sense ;  that  is,  righteousness.  The  Greek  word  or  class 
of  words,  never  means  justice  and  just  under  political 
analogies,  but  always  moral  justice ;  that  is  uprightness, 
or  Tightness  of  principle.  Hence  the  mixing  of  both 
classes  o£  words  in  the  translation  of  this  text,  so  as  to 
read  "righteousness"  and  "just"  and  "the  justifier  of," 


408  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

wears  a  suspicious  look,  and  is,  to  say  the  least,  unfor- 
tunate, because  of  the  ambiguity  it  creates. 

Still  no  very  great  detriment  will  be  suffered,  if  due 
care  is  taken  always  to  understand  the  words  just  and 
justify  as  having,  like  the  word  righteousness  that  precedes 
them,  a  purely  moral  significance — that  God  is  just,  as 
being  righteous,  and  justifies,  simply  as  communicating 
his  own  character  and  becoming  a  righteousness  upon  us. 
Unhappily  this  caution  is  not  observed  by  theologians, 
and  these  two  words  are  construed  very  commonly  by 
them,  under  the  judicial  analogies ;  as  if  there  were  a 
fixed  attribute  in  God  called  his  justice,  which  is  im- 
mutably set  for  the  vindication  of  right,  and  the  redress 
of  wrong,  by  deserved  punishments.  "  That  he  might 
be  just"  therefore  "and  the  justifier,"  is  taken  as  if 
there  were  some  adversative  relation  between  the 
clauses,  or  as  if  it  read  "just  and  yet  the  justifier  "  &c. — 
Christ  having  so  exactly  satisfied  the  immutable  justice, 
by  his  sufferings,  that  God  appears  to  be  just  as  ever, 
even  though  he  justifies,  or  passes  judgment  in  favor  of, 
those  who  deserve  nothing  but  punishment. 

It  will  be  seen  accordingly  that  a  right  view  of  Chris- 
tian justification  will  depend,  to  a  great  extent,  on  a 
proper  and  true  understanding  of  the  three  staple  words 
referred  to.  I  propose  therefore  at  the  outset,  and  be- 
fore offering  any  construction  of  the  passage  in  ques- 
tion, to  pause  on  the  words  themselves,  and  show,  by  a 
sufficiently  careful  investigation,  what  is  their  true 
meaning. 

The  Old  Testament  has  two  words,  one  a  moral  and 


CIIAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  409 

spiritual,  and  the  other  a  judicial,  which,  as  was  noted 
in  the  last  chapter,*  are  very  commonly  used  in  con- 
junction, yet  never  appear  to  cross,  or  get  confused,  in 
their  meaning.  Our  present  concern  is  with  the  first. 
It  means  originally  straight  just  as  our  Saxon  word 
right  and  the  Latin  word  rectus  denote,  in  their  symbol, 
a  straight  line ;  that  being  nature's  type  of  moral  right- 
ness,  or  rectitude.  ISTow  this  moral  word  of  the  Old 
Testament  is  translated,  taking  noun,  adjective,  and 
verb,  either  righteousness,  righteous,  and  being  right ;  or 
justice,  just,  and  being  just.  The  noun  is 

,    .     -.       .  TA  A.  ,,  How  the  three 

translated  righteousness  more  times  than   words  8tand  in 
can  well  be  numbered,  and  justice  in  the   the  Old  Testa' 

merit. 

moral  sense  of  righteousness  at  least 
twenty-five  times — never,  that  I  have  been  able  to  dis- 
cover, in  any  judicial,  or  vindicatory  sense.  The  ad- 
jective is  translated  righteous  still  more  frequently,  and 
just,  in  the  sense  of  morally  upright,  or  righteous,  about 
fifty  times — never  as  just,  in  the  retributive  and  judi- 
cial sense.  The  verb,  which  is  here  the  principal  mat- 
ter of  debate,  is  translated  to  be  upright,  holy,  true,  hon- 
est, innocent — all  words  of  moral  significance — also 
finally  to  justify.  Here  only  does  it  take  on  even  a 
semblance  of  judicial  character;  and  the  semblance  is, 
to  say  the  least,  extremely  doubtful  here.  The  Hebrew 
grammar,  it  may  be  necessary  to  observe,  has  a  causa- 
tive mood  for  the  verb,  which  is  called  the  Hiphil. 
Thus  the  Indicative  he  is  right,  becomes  in  the  Hiphil, 
he  causes  to  be  right,  makes  right,  or  righteous.  We  have 

*  Vide  note  p.  382. 

35 


410  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

three  terminations  that  give  a  Hiphil  power  in  English, 
ize  [harmon-ize]  from  the  Greek,  fy  [sancti-fy]  from  the 
Latin,  and  en  [hard-en]  from  the  Saxon.  But  our  En- 
glish verb  to  be  right  had  never  taken  a  Hiphil  form,  or 
power,  and  for  this  reason,  perhaps,  the  translators 
passed  over,  in  many  instances,  to  the  Latin  word  jus- 
tify, adopting  that ;  though  they  sometimes  manufacture 
a  phrase  that  carries  the  causative  meaning.  Thus,  in- 
stead of  saying  in  Daniel,  "  they  that  justify  many,"  they 
say  "  they  that  turn  many  to  righteousness."*  And  yet 
when  they  come  to  Isaiah  they  read — "by  his  knowl- 
edge shall  my  righteous  servant  justify  many ;  f  when 
the  meaning  is  exactly  as  before — "turn  many  to  right- 
eousness." Plainly  enough,  in  both  these  cases,  there 
is  no  thought  of  the  many  being  made  even  with  God's 
law,  or  judicially  acquitted,  but  only  of  their  being 
made  righteous.  It  is  as  if  the  very  un-English  expres- 
sion were  used — "shall  right-en,"  or  "shall  be  the 
righteousser  of,  many." 

It  may  readily  be  seen  that,  out  of  this  causative  or 
Iliphil  use,  there  will  be  a  sliding  naturally  into  the 
idea  of  passing  as  righteous;  because,  in  that,  we  only 
make  righteous  to  ourselves ;  and  then  this  passing  as 
righteous  will  have  a  certain  look  of  justifying  judi- 
cially, in  the  sense  of  acquittal.  "  He  is  near  that  justi- 
fieth  me,  who  will  contend  with  me?"J — where  the 
idea  is,  neither  that  God  makes  right,  nor  that  he  ac- 
quits and  absolves,  but  simply  that  he  passes,  or  ap- 
proves as  right.  Hence  the  pertinence  of  the  question 

*  Dan.  xii,  3.  f  Isa.  liii,  11.  J  Isa.  1,  8. 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  411 

— "  who  will  contend  with  me  ?"  or  show  me  to  be 
wrong  ?  In  two  other  cases  *  we  encounter  the  expres- 
sion "justify  the  righteous;"  where,  of  course,  there  is 
no  righteoussing  of  such  as  are  not,  neither  is  there  any 
more  a  justifying  in  the  sense  of  acquitting  or  absolv- 
ing ;  but  there  is  simply  a  passing  of  the  righteous  as 
righteous.  In  three  other  cases  f  we  find  the  expres- 
sion— "justify  the  wicked"  where  the  very  point  of  the 
charge  is  that  the  wicked  are  taken  to  favor,  passed  as 
righteous,  and  so  that  moral  distinctions,  not  forensic, 
are  confounded.  There  is  here  no  reference  whatever  to 
any  judicial  defection,  save  through  the  moral  of  which 
it  is  a  result.  On  the  whole  I  do  not  know  an  example 
in  the  Old  Testament,  where  the  original  moral  word 
above  referred  to,  whether  translated  righteousness, 
righteous,  and  be  right,  or  justice,  just,  and  justify,  is 
used  in  any  but  a  properly  moral  sense. 

We  come  now  to  the  Greek  word  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, the  same  which  is  translated  righteousness,  just, 
and  justify,  in  the  particular  passage  I  How  they  stand 
am  debating.  Here  we  find  the  noun  in  the  New  Testa- 
[<Waio<ruvT)]  always  translated  righteous-  l 
ness,  never  justice;  for  justice  is  a  word  which  does  not 
once  occur  in  the  New  Testament ;  the  adjective  [^lA-aioc:,] 
translated  about  fifty  times  righteous,  and  just  in  the 
moral  sense  ("condemned  and  killed  the  just")  J  about 
thirty  times,  never  once  in  a  judicial,  unless  it  be  in  the 
passage  we  have  under  examination;  also  the  verb 

*  Deut.  xxv,  1,  and  1  Kings  viii,  32. 
f  Ex.  xxiii,  7;  Prov.  xvii,  15;  Is.  v,  23.  \  James  v,  6. 


412  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  IIL 


always  translated  to  justify,  because  we  have 
no  other  Hiphil  word  to  fill  the  place  ;  still  showing 
clearly  always,  by  the  collocation  it  is  in,  as  here,  that 
it  has  a  moral  force  only,  just  as  it  has  in  the  Old  Tes- 
tament. Taking  this  very  sentence  then  —  "  to  declare 
his  righteousness  that  he  might  be  just  and  the  justifier  " 
—  who  can  imagine  that  the  two  latter  words,  just  and 
justifier,  are  words  to  be  turned  away  from  their  family 
relation  in  the  very  same  sentence,  and  made  to  carry 
a  forensic  or  judicial  meaning?  There  was  never  such 
an  example  of  bad  writing  in  the  world.  Besides  it 
may  be  safely  affirmed,  that  no  hardest  possible  strain 
of  labor  put  upon  this  causative  or  Hiphil  word,  to  jus- 
tify, can  make  it  carry,  at  all,  the  complicated,  artificial 
notion  of  such  a  justifying  —  that  which  justifies,  without 
either  making  any  body  just,  or  accepting  any  body  as 
being  just,  but  only  passes  a  verdict  of  quasi  justice,  on 
grounds  of  penal  suffering  not  personal  in  the  subject, 
but  contributed  by  another.  Why  if  the  transgressor 
had  borne  his  own  suffering,  and  had  perfectly  filled  up 
the  measure  of  it,  who  can  imagine  a  fiction  so  extrava- 
gant, as  that  he  should  be  called  a  just  man?  He 
would  not  even  be  forensically  just,  any  more  than  a 
malefactor  who  has  served  out  his  sentence. 

I  ought  perhaps  to  note,  in  this  connection,  the  very 
intensely,  mysteriously  moral  impression  held  by  such 

Uses  and  con-  a  writer  as  Plato,  when  he  speaks  of 
ceptions  of  Plato.  ^^  or  righteousness  ;  or,  if  so  he  is 
translated,  of  the  just,  or  justice.  "Justice,"  he  says, 
"is  the  virtue  of  the  soul,  injustice  its  vice.  The  just 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  413 

soul  then  and  the  just  man  will  live  well."*  In  the 
same  connection  he  speaks  of  the  harmonizing  effect  on 
the  moral  nature,  calling  righteousness,  or  justice,  "a 
correct  arrangement  of  the  parts  of  the  soul  towards 
each  other,  or  about  each  other."  He  recurs  again  and 
again  to  a  discussion  of  right,  or  justice,  and  gets  lost  in 
the  mystery,  not  finding  how  to  conceive  it.  He  repre- 
sents Socrates  in  a  discourse  upon  it,  telling  how  he  has 
inquired  of  many,  and  has  only  been  sunk  in  greater 
doubts  by  their  answers — this  only  is  clear  that  they  all 
conceive  it  as  a  certain  divine  something,  going  through 
all  things,  to  rule  them  by  its  unseen  sway.  One  whom 
he  questions  goes  into  the  etymology  of  the  word  &/TCUO?, 
conceiving  that  it  was  originally  &a/6v,  because  it  goes 
through  and  governs  all  things,  and  that  the  K  was  in- 
serted "  for  elegant  enunciation."  Another,  consulting 
the  mysteries,  found  it  to  mean  the  same  as  cause  ;  viz., 
a  power  to  rule  and  set  in  order.  Another  referred  it 
to  the  stm,  because  it  had  a  pervading  and  heating  and 
all-nourishing  power.  Another,  for  a  like  reason,  took 
it  to  be  a  certain  divine  fire  in  the  soul.  Another  took 
it  as  a  kind  of  piercing  world-soul,  that,  like  the  soul  of 
Anaxagoras,  mingled  with  nothing,  yet  pervaded  all 
things.  Whereupon  affectingly  baffled  by  so  many 
sublime  guesses,  he  gives  over  the  search,  declaring 
that  he  is  now  in  greater  doubt  and  mystery  of  thought, 
than  before  he  undertook  to  learn  what  j  ustice  is. f  How 
far  off  now,  in  all  these  wondering,  almost  adoring 
struggles  of  thought,  is  this  great  teacher,  from  even  so 

*  Republic,  Lib.  I.,  Cap.  24.        f  Cratylus. 
35* 


414  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

much  as  the  faintest  mental  reference  to  any  judicial 
analogies!  Could  he  have  conceived  the  right,  as  ever- 
lasting, necessary  idea,  a  law  before  all  government, 
going  through,  as  it  were,  even  God  and  God's  perfec- 
tions, and  so  through  all  moral  natures,  he  would,  at 
least,  have  found  the  Monarch  Principle  of  the  universe ; 
in  that  also,  some  fit  point  of  rest  for  his  inquiries. 
Even  the  groping  in  which  we  have  just  followed  him, 
the  lofty  burning  mystery  he  is  in,  were  a  preparation 
how  sublime,  how  almost  sacred,  for  the  apostle's  doc- 
trine of  the  cross,  when  he  says — "  Whom  God  hath 
set  forth  to  declare  his  righteousness  for  the  remission 
of  sins."  The  transcendent  principle  he  could  not  find, 
yet  even  worshipfully  sought,  is  there  discovered — a 
law,  as  Hooker  conceives,  "  laid  up  in  the  bosom  of 
God."* 

*  I  have  said  nothing,  in  this  verbal  disquisition,  of  a  very  singular 
philological  anomaly,  that  occurs,  in  the  etymology  of  this  word 
iixaioswri.  Used,  as  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  discover,  in  an  ex- 
clusively moral  sense,  it  appears,  and  is  taken  by  the  lexicographers,  to 
be  of  the  same  root,  as  another  family  of  words,  that  have  none  but  a 
vindictive  and  intensely  judicial  meaning.  Thus  we  have  JtV/j  trans- 
lated vengeance,  punishment,  and  the  like;  tvintos  just,  in  the  sense 
of  justly  deserved;  cK$iiceu  to  avenge,  or  revenge;  KaraSiicafa  to 
condemn.  Now  this  forensic  family  and  the  moral  family  are  supposed, 
both  together,  to  be  derived  from  the  Sanscrit  radical  dik,  which  means 
to  show,  and  is  the  undoubted  root  of  the  Greek  word  Seiuwfii,  which 
also  means  to  show.  And  perhaps  we  get  a  clue  in  this,  to  the  manner 
in  which  both  the  families  above  referred  to  raise  their  meaning.  For  to 
show  is  to  spread  out,  to  level,  or,  as  we  say,  to  ex-plain.  And  this  kind 
of  figure  associates  well  with  the  true  straight  line  of  rectitude,  and  also 
with  the  even  impartiality  of  retributive  justice ;  as  when  the  prophet 
says — » Judgment  also  will  I  lay  to  the  line,  and  righteousness  to  the 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  415 

We  come  back  thus  upon  the  apostle's  great  text  of 
justification,  to  settle,  if  we  can,  the  true  construction 
of  its  meaning.  And  it  could  hardly  The  three  words> 
be  more  clear,  I  think,  that  none  of  the  then,  are  moral  not 
words  here  grouped  together,  righteous-  Judlcml- 
ness,  just,  justifier  of,  are  to  receive  a  judicial,  or  judi- 
cially vindicative  meaning ;  which,  again,  is  but  another 
form  of  the  conclusion  that,  in  Christian  justification, 
there  is  no  reference  of  thought  whatever  to  the  satis- 
faction of  God's  retributive  justice,  or  to  any  acquittal 
passed  on  guilty  men,  because  the  score  of  their  account 
with  God's  justice  has  been  made  even  by  the  sufferings 
of  Christ.  The  justification  spoken  of  is  a  moral  affair, 
related  only  to  faith  in  the  subject,  and  the  righteous- 
ness of  God,  operative  in  or  through  his  faith.  In  this 
conviction  we  shall  be  farther  confirmed,  if  we  take  up 
each  of  the  three  co-relative  words  and  follow  them  into 
their  relational  uses. 

1.  The  righteousness  of  God.  Many  teachers  appear  to 
understand  this  expression,  in  the  particular  case  now 
in  hand,  as  meaning,  in  fact,  the  vindicatory  justice  of 
God.  God  declares  his  justice,  they  conceive,  in  the 
penal  sufferings  of  Christ,  so  that  he  can  remit  the  sins 

plummet."  In  the  same  way  it  comes  to  pass,  that  Solon  calls  the  calm, 
smooth  sea,  "  the  right  [Juraioy]  sea."  Xenophon  also  calls  a  jolting 
chariot  a  "  not  right  [not  level]  chariot,"  in  the  same  way.  Virgil  too 
calls  the  outspread,  even  plain,  "justissima  tettus."  "Whatever  may  be 
true,  in  this  very  singular  problem  of  etymology,  the  two  great  families, 
the  moral  and  judicial,  are  certainly  distinct  in  their  meaning,  and  there 
is  no  fair  pretext  for  carrying  over  a  judicial  meaning  to  the  moral  fam- 
ily, on  the  ground  of  their  etymological  relationship. 


416  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

that  are  past  and  keep  his  justice  good.     If  so,  there  is 

no  other  such  use  of  the  term.     We  do  not  read  "  the 

justice  of  God  which  is  by  faith  ;"*  nor 

meaning  JiV  the    "  by  the  justice  of  one  the  free  gift  came 


righteousness  of     UpOn   aU  .»|   nor    «  gOing  a^out  to 

lish  their  own  justice,  have  not  submitted 
themselves  to  the  justice  of  God  ;"J  nor  "  the  justice  of 
God  unto  all,  and  upon  all  them  that  belie  ve."§  These 
passages  all  turn  upon  the  word  righteousness,  and  if  we 
substitute  their  meaning  by  that  of  justice,  they  only 
become  absurd,  or  even  revolting. 

2.  That  he  might  be  just.     Here  it  is  often  conceived, 
that  God  must  needs  keep  himself  just,  in  men's  con- 

The  bein  'ust  victi°ns  5  ^^  ^s  jus*  in  ^Q  judicial  and 
not  judicially  vindicatory  sense,  as  the  avenger  of 
transgression,  else  he  can  not  forgive,  or 
justify.  The  English  word  just  occurs  only  twice  in 
the  New  Testament,  in  this  retributive  and  judicial 
sense,  where  it  translates,  not  <Waio£,  the  moral  word, 
but  svSiKos,  a  word  always  retributive.)  Meantime,  in 
the  more  than  thirty  other  examples,  where  it  translates 
Sueauos,  it  means  simply  just  in  the  sense  of  right,  or 
righteous,  and  can  not  be  made  to  mean  any  thing  else. 
In  the  phrase  we  are  now  debating,  therefore,  we  can 
not  understand  the  word/wsJ  to  mean  retributively,  fo- 
rensically  just,  without  supposing  that,  in  this  one  single 
use,  the  original  word  has  forgotten  its  meaning  —  which 
is  the  most  unlikely  thing  possible.  Besides,  the  ad- 

*  Rom.  iii,  22.         f  Rom.  v,  18.         \  Rom.  x,  3.         §  Rom.  iii,  22. 
1  Just  now  referred  to  in  the  note,  p.  414. 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  417 

versative  construction  that  goes  almost  necessarily  with 
the  idea  of  a  retributive  meaning  in  the  epithet  just,  is 
favored  by  nothing  in  the  grammar,  but  is  forbidden 
rather.  It  does  not  read — "  that  he  might  be  just  [re- 
tributively]  and  yet  justify,"  but  "that  he  might  be  just 
and  justify ;"  that  is  that  he  might  be  so  conspicuously, 
gloriously  righteous,  as  to  communicate  righteousness 
to  every  believer.  Neither  .will  it  signify  any  thing  to 
say  that,  in  undertaking  to  be  so  conspicuously  righteous, 
he  will  rather  repel  than  draw,  and  of  course  will  do  any 
thing  but  communicate ;  for  though  there  may  be  some- 
thing appalling  in  the  perfect  and  pure  righteousness  of 
God,  it  is  also,  in  another  view,  a  character  most  tender, 
benignant,  and  patient.  If  I  were  a  wholly  righteous 
man,  given  up  to  right  in  a  perfect  and  unfaltering  hom- 
age, I  should  certainly  forgive  my  enemy  for  that  rea- 
son. And  in  just  this  way  an  apostle  conceives  the 
righteousness  of  God,  saying — "faithful  and  just  [that 
is,  righteous]  to  forgive  us  our  sins."*  His  opinion  of 
God's  righteousness  is  such,  that  he  even  grounds  the 
confidence  of  forgiveness  in  it.  And  another  apostle 
grounds  the  confidence  of  a  most  tender  treatment  of  the 
undeserving,  on  the  same  idea  of  God's  righteousness, 
saying — "  God  is  not  unrighteous  to  forget  your  work 
and  labor  of  love,  in  that  ye  have  ministered  to  the 
saints,"  &c.f  Fallen  sadly  away  from  their  faith,  he 
even  conceives  that  God  will  have  it  still  as  a  point  of 
righteousness,  to  remember  their  good  deeds  and  make 
more  of  them  than  they  deserve.  In  this  way,  God  will 

*  1  John  i,  9.        f  Heb.  vi,  10. 


418  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

have  declared  his  righteousness  in  Christ — shown  him- 
self righteous,  even  to  the  extent  of  putting  righteous- 
ness upon  every  one  that  believeth. 

3.  And  the  justifier  of.  Here  we  have  the  causative 
mood  of  the  Old  Testament  word  reappearing  in  the 
The  justifying  New.  And  there  is  no  example,  that  I 
not  judicial.  knoWj  where  it  carries  a  judicial  meaning ; 
though  there  is,  of  course,  a  large  variety  of  meaning 
in  the  uses.  When  it  is  declared  that  men  shall  "jus- 
tify God,"  it  certainly  does  not  mean  the  same  thing  as 
when  God  is  said  "to  justify  the  ungodly;"  and  yet 
there  is  a  closer  approach  of  meaning,  in  the  two  cases, 
than  might,  at  first,  be  supposed.  When  men  justify 
God,  they  pass  him  righteous,  and  when  God  justifies 
the  ungodly,  he  passes  them  righteous — only  he  becomes, 
besides,  the  righteousness  upon  them  that  makes  it  true. 
The  justification  is  purely  moral  in  the  first  case,  be- 
cause no  justification  but  a  moral  one  is  here  possible; 
and  that,  in  the  second,  there  is  no  thought  of  a  judicial 
acquittal,  on  account  of  penal  compensations  paid  by 
Christ,  will  be  most  conclusively  shown  from  the  fact 
that  the  common  uses  of  the  word  so  plainly  relate  to 
what  is  moral  only.  Thus  it  is  declared,  by  our  apostle, 
in  the  very  discussion  we  are  having  in  review,  that 
Abraham  "  believed  God  and  it  was  counted  unto  him 
for  righteousness  ;"*  and  the  very  particular  matter  of 
promise  on  which  he  believed,  being  so  justified  by  his 
faith,  is  given  us  expressly ;  viz.,  that  he  should  have 
an  heir  to  perpetuate  his  family.  He  is  justified,  we 

*  Eora.  iv,  3,  20-22. 


CHAP.  VII.      JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  419 

can  see,  by  simply  being  brought  nigh  enough  to  God 
in  his  faith,  to  be  the  friend  of  God,  and  become  in- 
vested in  God's  righteousness.  This  justification  again 
is  called  "the  justification  of  life,"*  supposing  evidently 
the  fact  of  some  life-giving  power  in  the  dispensation  of 
it;  and  where  is  the  life-giving  of  a  mere  acquittal, 
passed  on  the  ground  that  the  bad  account  of  sin  is 
made  even?  Again  Christ  is  declared  to  have  been 
"  delivered  for  our  offenses  and  raised  again  for  our  jus- 
tification."f  But  if  the  whole  matter  of  the  justification 
depends  on  what  he  has  suffered  for  our  offenses,  we 
shall  as  certainly  be  justified,  or  have  our  account  made 
even,  if  he  does  not  rise,  as  if  he  does.  Doubtless  the 
rising  has  an  immense  significance,  when  the  justifica- 
tion is  conceived  to  be  the  renewing  of  our  moral  na- 
ture in  righteousness ;  for  it  is  only  by  the  rising  that 
his  incarnate  life  and  glory  are  fully  discovered,  and  the 
righteousness  of  God  declared  in  his  person,  in  its  true 
moral  power.  But  in  the  other  view  of  justification, 
there  is  plainly  enough  nothing  depending,  as  far  as 
that  is  concerned,  on  his  resurrection.  When,  again,  he 
is  himself  declared,  though  "  manifest  in  the  flesh  "  and 
subject  to  its  low  estate,  to  be  "justified  in  the  spirit, "J 
what  does  it  mean  but  that  his  higher  life  is  seen  to  be 
invested  with  the  evident  righteousness  of  God — in- 
wardly just,  or  justified?  To  imagine  that  he  is  only 
declared  to  be  legally  acquitted,  judicially  justified,  is 
quite  impossible.  When  again  we  read — "  but  ye  are 
washed,  but  ye  are  sanctified,  but  ye  are  justified,  in  the 

*  Rom.  v,  18.  f  Rom.  iv,  25.  J  1  Tim.  iii,  16. 


420  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.      .  PART  III. 

name  of  the  Lord  Jesus  and  by  the  Spirit  of  our  God  "* 
— what  is  the  very  subject  matter  of  the  declaration,  but 
the  moral  renewing  of  the  soul?  Besides,  "the  Spirit 
of  God"  is  conceived  to  be  concerned  in  the  justifying 
spoken  of;  as  he  certainly  could  not  be  and  is  never 
even  supposed  to  be,  in  the  doctrine  of  a  mere  compen- 
sational  and  judicial  justification. 

Having  now  these  three  main  points  of  the  apostle's 

language  made  out  and  established,  in  a  manner  that 

leaves  no  room  for  dispute,  we  need  also 

The    "declar- 
ing"   and    the  to  notice,  in  a  very  brief  manner,  two  or 

» remiasion  »  ex-  t^ree  of  faQ  subordinate  points  which  affect 
the  general  meaning.  The  expression. "  to 
declare"  is  rather  insufficient.  The  original,  very  forcible 
expression  is,  "for  the  in-showing"  [sv&i£ivj  that  is,  "for 
producing  an  effective  impression  of,  the  righteousness 
of  God."  For  every  thing,  as  regards  a  justifying  effect 
depends,  it  will  be  seen,  on  the  powerful  demonstration 
made  of  God's  righteousness,  in  the  incarnate  life  and 
death  of  Christ.  It  appears  to  be  a  matter  of  doubt, 
with  the  commentators,  whether  the  phrase,  "  through 
the  forbearance  of  God,"  is  to  be  connected  with  'the 
participial  clause,  "that  are  past,"  or  with  the  clause, 
"for  the  remission."  But  the  participle,  "that  are 
past,"  does  not  mean  "that  are  passed  by,"  but  only 
"  that  took  place  in  past  time."  To  conceive,  therefore, 
that  the  sins  took  place,  by  the  forbearance  of  God,  is 
too  weak  to  be  a  true  conjunction.  Say,  instead,  "  for 
the  remission,  by  God's  forbearance,  of  sins  in  the 

*  1  Cor.  vi,  11. 


P.  VIL,     JUSTIFICATION    BJT  JFAITH.  421 


and  the  vigor  of  good«ense  returns.  There  ap- 
pears to  have  been  a  fear  of  saying  "  the  remission  of 
sins  by  God's  forbearance,"  lest  it  might  not  be  the  true 
theology.  It  is  not  considered,  perhaps,  how  the  declar- 
ation of  God's  righteousness  will  have,  covered  up  that 
laxity,  if  laxity  there  was. 

"We  read  the  whole  passage  then  as  follows — "  To  de- 
clare [that  is,  demonstrate,  inwardly  impress]  his  right- 
eousness, for  the  remission,  by  God's  for-      The  true  ver- 
bearance,  of  sins  heretofore  committed;  sion- 

to  declare  [demonstrate,]  I  say,  for  this  present  time,  his 
righteousness,  that  he  might  be  righteous  [stand  full  be- 
fore us  in  the  evident  glory  of  his  righteousness]  and  the  -  - 
justifier  [righteousser]  of  him  that  believeth  in  Jesus."    y   ^*' 

If  any  apology  is  necessary  for  using  again  this  veryx 
ungrammatical,  mock-English  substitute  for  the  \ 
"justifier"  it  must  be  that,  without  some 
such  device,  I  do  not  see  in  what  way  I  protestant 


ver- 


can  steer  my  exposition  exactly  enough,   sjons  both  con~ 

through  the  close  and  perilous  strait  be- 

tween the   Catholic  doctrine  on  one  hand,   and   the 


Protestant  on  other,  to  avoid  an  appearance  of  lapsing 

in  this  or  that  —  when  both,  in  fact,  are  only  unsuccess- 

ful  attempts  to  exhibit  the  true  gospel  idea.     The  Cath- 

olic  says,    "making  righteous;"   the  Protestant  says, 

"  declaring  to  be  righteous  ;"  neither  of  which  is  the  ex-        * 

act  conception  of  Christian  justification.     The  Christian    J^J^A^ 

is  not  a  man  made  righteous  in  himself,  or  in  his  own       ,    7/rr 

habit  ;  neither  is  he  a  man  held  to  be  righteous,  when     A-M. 

he  is  not,  by  what  is  called  a  "  dedaratio  pro  justo  ;"  ty^t  ++* 

36 


422  .    JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

it  is  no  fitting  way,  for  a  gospel  of  divine  mercy,  to  end 
off  in  a  fiction  that  falsifies  even  the  eternal  distinctions 
of  character.  Hence  there  is  wanted  here  a  verb  that  we 
have  not — even  as  the  Greeks  appear  to  have  made  one 
out  of  their  adjective — so  that  we  also  may  say,  "  that  he 
might  be  righteous  and  the  righteousser,"  &c. ;  for  it  is 
the  peculiar  and  exact  result  of  this  outlandish  word, 
that  it  describes  a  state,  where  the  righteousness  may  be 
conceived  as  a  flowing  in  of  God's  righteousness  upon 
the  believing  soul,  thus  and  forever  to  flow.  The  sub- 
ject is  not  conceived  to  be  made  righteous  personally, 
by  infusion,  and  started  off  as  an  inherently  right-going 
character,  but  is  thought  of  as  being  held  in  everlasting 
confidence  and  right-going,  because  he  is  vitally  con- 
nected, by  his  faith,  with  the  inspirations  of  God,  or  of 
the  righteousness  of  God.  He  is  made  righteous,  using 
the  Catholic  words,  in  the  sense  that  he  is  always  to  be 
so  derivatively  from  the  righteousness  of  God;  ac- 
counted righteous,  using  the  Protestant,  in  the  sense 
that  he  is  always  being  made  so,  by  the  righteousness 
of  God  revealed  from  faith  to  faith.  And  this  is  his 
condition  of  justification ;  his  being  always  just  because 
he  always  believes ;  never  to  be  just,  for  a  moment,  after 
he  ceases  to  believe. 

In  this  careful  exposition  of  what  may  be  called  the 
charter  text  of  Christian  justification,  two  points  have 
been  held  in  reserve  for  separate  consideration ;  viz., 
the  righteousness  of  God  as  related  to  justification  ;  and 
the  relation  we  ourselves  have  to  God's  righteousness, 
in  the  faith  by  which  we  are  justified. 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.,  423 

I.  The  righteousness  of  God  as  related  to  justification. 
The  apostle,  as  we  have  already  observed,  makes  much 
of  the  in-showing,  or  felt  impression 

.         n  .         .    ,  .  The    Kighteous- 

produced,  of  the  righteousness  of  God  ;    ness  of  God  as  re- 


repeating,  for  the  sake  of  emphasis—  u  to  lated  to  J 
declare  "  —  to  declare,  I  say  —  "  the  right- 
eousness of  God  "  —  first  "  for  the  remission  of  sins,"  and 
next  "  for  the  justifying,"  or  righteoussing  of  sinners  ; 
evidently  conceiving  that,  in  the  declaration,  or  impres- 
sion made  [ev<fo£<v]  of  God's  righteousness,  lies  all  the 
principal  value  of  his  work. 

According  to  the  common  conception,  his  declaration 
of  the  righteousness  of  God  prepares  a  ground  of  remis- 
sion. or  a  ground  of  justification;  and  in 

Christ    not    a 

that  sense  Christ  obtains,  by  his  death,  gr0und,  but  a 
the  grace  of  remission,  or  of  justification.  p°yeri  ofjustm- 
Perhaps  we  shall  find  reason  to  believe, 
that  Christ  is  a  great  deal  more  to  us  than  aground; 
viz.,  a  power  of  the  same  things  —  in  such  sense  a  power 
that,  if  they  were  not  wrought  by  him,  they  would 
never,  in  fact,  be,  at  whatever  cost  of  grounding  they 
obtain  a  right  to  be. 

The  very  light  notions  prevalent  concerning  remis- 
sion, or  forgiveness,  and  especially  in  connection  with 
the  idea  that  Christ  is  concerned  to  pre-  Light  notions  of 
pare  a  ground  of  remission,  make  it  nee-  remission. 
essary  to  revise  our  impressions  at  this  point.  It  is  a 
rather  common  question,  whether  God  could  forgive 
sins  on  the  ground  of  our  mere  repentance,  without  any 
ground  of  compensation  made  to  his  j  ustice  ?  But  if  he 


424  ..JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  II L 

could,  meaning  only  what  is  commonly  meant  by  re- 
mission, the  remission  would  make  no  change  and  con- 
fer no  benefit  whatever.  Besides  the  question  only  asks 
what  God  could  bestow,  if  we  should  do  the  impossible  ? 
For  no  man  is  able,  by  his  own  act,  to  really  cast  off  sin 
and  renew  himself  in  good ;  and  to  ask  what  God  may 
do,  in  such  a  case,  indicates  a  very  superficial  view  both 
of  sin  and  of  remission. 

What  then  is  remission  more  sufficiently  conceived  ? 
The  word,  both  in  Greek  and  English,  is  a  popular 
word,  which  signifies,  in  common  speech,  a  letting  go ; 
that  is,  a  letting  go  of  blame,  a  consenting  to  raise  no 
impeachment  farther  and  to  have  all  wounded  feeling 
dismissed.  But  though  God  accommodates  our  under- 
standing, in  the  use  of  this  rather  superficial  word,  we 
can  easily  see,  as  I  have  already  intimated  in  another 
place,  that  his  relations  to  a  sinning  soul  under  his  gov- 
ernment, taken  hold  of,  as  it  is  already,  by  the  retribu- 
tive causes  arrayed  in  nature  itself  for  the  punishment 
of  transgression,  are  so  different  from  those  of  a  man  to 
a  wrong  doing  fellow  man,  that  a  mere  letting  go,  or 
consenting  no  longer  to  blame,  really  accomplishes 
nothing  as  regards  the  practical  release  of  sin.  It  is 
only  a  kind  of  formality,  or  verbal  discharge,  that  car- 
ries practically  no  discharge  at  all.  It  says  "  go  "  but 
leaves  the  prison  doors  shut.* 

*  Dr.  Whitley  says  with  great  truth — "  Remission  of  sin  is  not  the 
mere  cold  reputative  or  forensic  remission  of  a  bond  or  debt ;  it  is  not  a 
bare  judicial,  external  discharge  from  the  obligation  of  the  law  to  posi- 
tive pains  and  penalties ;  it  is  something  more  distinct  and  practical 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.,  425 

We  ought  to  be  sure  beforehand,  that  the  Scripture 
will  not  leave  the  matter  here,  but  will  somehow  man- 
age to  strike  a  deeper  key.  And  we  find,  Three  concep_ 
as  we  go  into  the  inquiry,  that  we  have,  tionsheidbythe 
at  least,  three  distinct  forms  of  expression  *" 
given  us,  to  accommodate  our  uses,  according  to  the 
particular  mode  of  thought  by  which  we  are,  or  are  to 
be,  exercised. 

Thus,  if  we  are  thinking  of  God's  displeasure,  or  his 
feeling  of  blame,  we  have  the  word  " remission"  that 
speaks  of  releasing  the  blame;  and  we  often  use  the 
much  deeper  word  forgiveness  in  the  same  superficial 
sense. 

If,  again,  we  think  of  our  sin  as  a  state  of  moral  inca- 
pacity and  corruption,  fastened  upon  us  by  the  retribu- 
.  tive  causes  which  our  sin  has  provoked,  we  are  allowed 
to  speak  of  "  forgiveness  "  as  the  "  taking  away  "  of  our 
sin;  just  as  we  may  of  being  "healed,"  "washed," 
"reconciled,"  "delivered,"  "turned  away,"  "made 
free."  Here  we  conceive  that  God  is  able,  in  the  de- 
claration of  his  righteousness,  to  get  such  a  hold  of  the 
souls  that  are  sweltering  in  disorder,  under  the  natural 
effects  of  transgression,  as  to  bring  them  out  of  their 
disorder  into  righteousness.  By  his  moral  power,  which 

something  more  present  and  homefelt  within  us — it  is  remission  or  liber- 
ation from  the  essential  naughtiness,  heinousness,  and  malignity  of  moral 
evil  itself;  for  whilst  all  penal  ire  and  positive  infliction  might  be  re- 
mitted and  foreborne,  the  spiritual  disease  and  death  of  the  soul  might  re- 
main hi  all  their  genuine  horrors,  in  all  their  innate  mischief  and  misery." 
(Atonement  and  Sacrifice,  Sect  12.) 

36* 


426  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

is  the  power  of  his  righteousness  supernaturally  re- 
vealed in  Christ,  he  masters  the  retributive  causations 
of  their  nature,  and  they  receive  what  is  more  than  a 
ground  of  remission ;  viz.,  the  executed  fact  of  remis- 
sion, or  spiritual  release.  Otherwise,  under  a  mere  let- 
ting go,  the  bad  causes  hold  fast  like  fire  in  brimstone, 
refusing  to  be  cheated  of  their  prey.  The  same  is  true 
of  forgiveness;  only  when  this  same  deliverance  is 
called,  in  the  English,  "  forgiveness,"  there  appears  to 
be  a  reference  to  the  fact  that  Christ  forgives,  in  the 
sense  of  giving  himself  for,  the  transgressor,  to  get  so 
great  power  over  him  and  be  the  power  of  God  unto 
salvation  upon  him.* 

If,  again,  we  think  of  something  higher  and  more 
sovereign,  even  than  this  executed  release ;  if  we  want 
to  get  above  all  the  condemnations  of  statutes,  and  the 
severe  motivities  or  enforcements  of  instituted  govern- 
ment itself;  if  we  raise  our  thought,  with  a  certain  di- 
.vine  envy,  to  God,  longing  to  be  as  little  hampered  as 
He,  by  fears  and  requirements  and  bad  liabilities ;  then 
it  is  given  us  to  know  that  we  are  "justified" — made 
and  kept  righteous,  by  the  righteousness  of  God  upon 
us,  and  reigning  as  a  Divine  Moral  Power  in  us.  And 

*  By  a  singular  coincidence,  other  languages  make  their  word  of  re- 
lease out  of  the  verb  to  give,  in  the  same  manner.  Thus  we  have  con- 
dono,  par-don,  ver-geben,  accurately  matching  our  English  vrord  for-give. 
A  coincidence  the  more  remarkable  that  the  Greek  word  ^a/3(£o/*ai, 
translated  by  our  word  forgive,  has  no  reference  to  the  figure  of  giving 
at  all.  Still  Christ  is  put  in  this  figure,  [<J*Jw/u  *«/>,]  many  times  over 
in  the  New  Testament,  and  that  perhaps  is  the  sufficient  explanation. 
Gal.  ii,  20;  Eph.  v,  25;  1  Tim.  ii,  6;  Tit.  ii,  14;  John  vi,  51. 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  427 

therefore  it  is  that  so  much  is  made  of  "  the  declaring 
[in-showing]  of  the  righteousness  of  God  "  by  Christ ; 
because,  in  real  verity,  our  justification  is  to  be  the 
righteousness  of  God  upon  us.  For  this  righteousness 
declared  is  but  another  name  for  the  great  Moral  Power 
already  shown  to  be  obtained  by  Christ  in  his  sacrifice. 
Beginning  at  the  point  of  Christ's  humanity,  and  tracing 
his  course  onward  through  death  and  the  resurrection, 
he  is  obtaining,  all  the  while,  as  man,  a  great  Name  and 
Power ;  till  finally  we  see  him  culminate  in  absolute, 
deific  perfection,  or  the  righteousness  of  God.  Begin- 
ning at  the  other  pole,  and  conceiving  him  in  deific  per- 
fection, or  righteousness,  which  is  by  him  to  be  declared, 
or  made  a  power  on  men,  we  only  describe  inversely 
the  same  thing.  In  one  case  the  humanity  culminates 
in  the  righteousness  of  God ;  and  in  the  other  the  right- 
eousness of  God  is  incarnated  and  declared  in  humanity. 
The  result  is  an  embodiment,  in  either  case,  of  God's 
perfection  in  a  human  life  and  character,  to  be  a  new 
creating,  justifying  power,  and  so  a  gospel.  _  _  • 

Christian  justification  has,  in  this  view,  no  reference 
whatever  to  justice  under  the  political  analogies,  or  to 
any  compensation  of  justice.  As  re-  Justification  has 

SpCCtS  the   full,    round  conception   of  it,    no  reference  to  jua- 

an  immense  advantage  is  gained  by  the 
distinction  I  have  drawn,  between  the  law  before  gov- 
ernment, and  the  instituted  government  by  which  God 
undertakes  the  maintenance  of  it,  and  our  final  restora- 
tion to  it.  The  righteousness  of  God  is  what  God  was, 
before  the  eternal,  necessary  law  of  his  own  nature, 


428  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.          PART  III. 

When  we  are  justified  by  faith,  or  "  by  yielding  our 
members  instruments  of  righteousness  unto  God,"  which 
is  the  same  thing,  we  are  carried  directly  back  into  the 
recesses,  so  to  speak,  of  God's  eternity — back  of  all  in- 
stituted government,  back  of  the  creation,  back  of  the 
statutes,  and  penalties,  and  the  coming  wrath  of  guilti- 
ness, and  all  the  contrived  machineries  and  means  of 
grace,  including  in  a  sense  even  the  Bible  itself,  and 
rested  with  God,  on  the  base  of  His  antecedent,  sponta- 
neous, immutable  righteousness.  We  are  taken  by  all 
the  foundations  of  the  world,  and  the  governings,  com- 
pulsions, fears,  and  judgments  that  make  up  the  scaf- 
folding of  our  existence,  and  have  our  relations,  with 
God,  only  to  the  law  before  government ;  being  in  it, 
and  the  freedom  of  it,  as  being  in  Him  and  His  freedom. 
In  so  far  as  we  are  still  incomplete,  statutes,  penal  en- 
forcements, and  all  kinds  of  instituted  means  and  ma- 
chineries, are  necessary  to  the  mixed  quality  we  are  in ; 
but  in  so  far  as  we  are  in  the  righteousness  of  (Jod,  we 
are  raised  above  them,  into  that  primal  law  which  God 
undertook,  as  the  total  object  of  his  administration,  to 
establish  in  created  jrninds./  We  are  thus  united  to  God 
in  the  antecedent  glorias  and  liberties  of  his  eternal 
character.  The  bondages  and  fears  of  our  guiltiness  are 
left  behind.  Being  in  God's  righteousness,  we  also 
share  the  confidence  of  his  integrity.  And  the  work 
of  righteousness,  both  for  Him  and  for  us,  shall  be 
peace,  and  the  effect  of  righteousness,  quietness  and  as- 
surance,, fore  ver. 

is  justification  with  a  meaning,  and  it  is  only 

i  &+*aJb£ 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  429 

this,  however  we  may  conceive  it,  that  makes  our  justi- 
fication a  state  of  peace  and  liberty,  so  unspeakably 
strong  and  triumphant.  How  artificial,  and  meager, 
and  cold  in  comparison,  is  the  justification  which  only 
means  that  justice  is  satisfied  in  Christ's  pains,  and  that 
faith,  seizing  on  that  fact,  concludes  that  punishment  is 
escaped!  This  is  justification  as  before  justice — which 
is  only  one  of  God's  means  of  government — not  before 
the  everlasting  standard  for  which  government  exists. 
In  other  words,  it  is  justification  without  righteousness ; 
for  if  any  thing  is  said  of  that,  it  appears  to  be  only 
meant,  that  as  good  a  footing  is  obtained  for  the  soul 
without  righteousness,  as  if  it  were  righteous. 

But  if  justifying  faith  has  no  respect  to  the  fact  that 
justice  is  satisfied,  then  it  will  be  objected  that  the  lia- 
bilities of  justice  still  remain.  Un-  objected  that  the 
doubtedly  they  do,  if  by  liabilities  we  liabilities  of  justice 
mean  the  dues  of  justice;  and  our  dues 
would  be  exactly  the  same  if  a  ground  of  release  were 
provided  in  the  pains  of  another.  That  ground  pro- 
vided would  not  make  the  dues  of  penalty  any  the  less 
due,  in  justice,  from  us.  The  objection  here  is  created 
by  an  assumption  that  there  is  no  deliverance  from  the 
claims  of  justice,  save  as  they  are  legally  compensated. 
What  has  been  said  of  justice  and  penalty,  in  the  four 
previous  chapters,  will  sufficiently  show  the  contrary. 
Besides,  no  soul  that  has  felt  the  righteoussing  power  of 
God,  and  been  raised  to  a  conscious  participation  of  his 
righteousness — set  in  His  confidence,  let  forth  unto  His 
liberty — will  assuredly  want  any  other  evidence. 


430  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

Another  kind  of  objection  will  occur  to  many ;  viz., 

that  the  righteousness  of  God  is  too  severe  and  stern  to 

have,  when  declared,  any  such  attractive 

Another     objec-  ,      , 

tion  that  righteous-  power  over  souls  that  are  in  wrong,  and 
ness  condemns  and  js  most  of  all  unfitted  to  become  a  new- 
creating  force  in  their  life.  Such  per- 
sons have  been  somehow  accustomed  to  think  of  God's 
righteousness,  as  being  one  and  the  same  thing  with  his 
justice,  and  their  associations  correspond.  Instead  of 
blessing  themselves,  and  counting  all  souls  blessed,  in 
the  fact  that  God  is  everlastingly  right,  having  all  the 
benignities,  fidelities,  integrities,  and  supreme  glories  of 
a  perfect  righteousness,  they  speak  of  it  as  being  an  ap- 
palling character,  one  that  creates  inevitable  dread  and 
revulsion ;  setting  it  forth  in  terrorem,  not  seldom,  as  a 
hard  and  fateful  rigor  opposite  to  love.  Whereas  right- 
eousness, translated  into  a  word  of  the  affections,  is  love, 
and  love,  translated  back  into  a  word  of  the  conscience, 
is  righteousness.  We  associate  a  more  fixed  exactness, 
it  may  be,  and  a  stronger  thunder  of  majesty  with  right- 
eousness, but  there  is  no  repugnance  between  it  and  the 
very  love  itself  of  Christ.  When  Christ  thinking  of  his 
death  and  resurrection,  says  that  he  will  convince  the 
world,  in  that  manner,  of  righteousness,  does  he  mean 
that  he  will  not  also  draw  the  world  by  love  ?  or  does  he 
rather  mean  that,  raising  the  conviction  of  righteousness, 
he  will  draw  the  more  powerfully  ?  Nowhere,  in  fact, 
do  we  feel  such  a  sense  of  the  righteousness  of  God,  as 
we  do  in  the  dying  scene  of  Christ — "  Certainly  this  was 
a  righteous  man  " — and  we  only  feel  the  more  power- 
fully that  God  is  a  forgiving  God. 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  431 

Indeed  we  have  just  the  same  opinion  of  righteous- 
ness in  men — we  only  expect  the  more  confidently  to 
be  forgiven,  because  the  man  we  have  injured  is  a  right- 
eous man.  If  I  have  an  enemy  who  has  done  me  a 
great  personal  wrong ;  if  I  can  bring  him  to  justice  and 
make  an  example  of  him  that  will  do  much  to  honor  the 
laws ;  if,  too,  I  have  a  fire  of  natural  indignation  that, 
apart  from  all  revenge,  arms  me  against  him  and  pre- 
pares me  to  see  him  suffer ;  shall  I  be  false,  therefore, 
to  my  own  virtue,  if  I  do  not  make  him  suffer  ?  Call- 
ing this  my  instinct  of  justice,  is  it  therefore  a  finality 
with  me,  beyond  the  control  of  reason  and  right?  Is 
there  no  justice  above  justice,  in  which,  as  a  righteous 
man,  I  am  even  bound  to  subordinate  the  lower  ranges 
of  vindictive  impulse,  and  give  myself  tenderly  to 
courses  of  patience  and  suffering  sacrifice,  that  I  may 
gain  my  enemy?  Nay,  if  my  vindicatory  impulse 
should  indeed  assume  to  be  my  law,  what  can  I  do  but 
call  it  a  temptation  of  the  devil,  and  betake  myself  to 
fasting  if  need  be  to  subdue  it? 

Dismissing  then  all  such  false  impressions,  and  taking 
the  righteousness  of  God  no  more  as  a  preventive  to 
mercy,  but  as  a  ground  of  mercy  rather,  Ju3tification  re. 
we  begin  to  see  how  much  it  means  that  stores  the  normal 
Christ,  in  becoming  the  moral  power  of  8tate ' 
God  in  his  sacrifice,  becomes,  in  another,  but  nowise 
contrary  view,  the  righteousness  of  God  declared.  For 
in  the  original  normal  state  of  being,  the  righteousness 
of  God  was  to  be  a  power  all  diffusive,  a  central,  self- 
radiating  orb — Sun  itself  of  Kighteousness,  shining 


4:32  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  IIL 

I 
~  ,-   Abroad  on  all  created  minds  and  overspreading  them,  as 

/  lit  were,  with  the  sovereign  day  of  its  own  excellence. 

I  The  plan  never  was  that  created  beings  should  be  right- 
I  eouSj  in  such  a  sense,  by  their  own  works,  or  their  own 


inherent  force,  as  not  to  be  derivatively  righteous  and 

r    A/vil      kj  ^k    ^ey  ka(l  an(^  were  eterna%  to  have,  their  § 
>      ,  righteoussing  in  God.     Kemaining  upright,  JhgY^oulff' 

U  1  CLtt*     consciously  have  had  their  righteousness  in  God's  inspi-          Jr 
j.  (jQyr  rations,  and  would  even  have  been  hurt  by  a  contrary       J  ^W 
/Suggestion.  ^L  v 

v\ft**f  ^f*;  Hence  the  dismal  incapacity  of  sin;  because  it  ^epa 
^g^*  j^j;ates  the  soul  from  God's  life-giving  character  and  in- 
spirations.  Having  Him  no  more,  as  the  fontal  source 
of  righteousness,  it  falls  off  into  an  abnormal,  self-cen- 
tered  state,  where  it  comes  under  fears,  and  legal  en- 
forcements,  and  judicial  wrath,  and  struggles  vainly,  if 
at  all,  to  keep  its  account  even,  or  recover  itself  to  its 
own  ideals.  Works  of  the  law,  dead  works  carefully 
piled,  will-works,  works  of  supererogation,  penances, 
alms,  austerities  of  self-mortification  —  none  of  these,  nor 
all  of  them,  make  out  the  needed  righteousness.  Still 
there  is  a  felt  deficiency,  which  the  apostle  calls  "a 
coming  short  of  the  glory  of  God."  Nothing  will  suince 
for  this,  but  to  come  back,  finite  to  infinite,  creature  to 
Creator,  and  take  derivatively  what,  in  its  nature, 
must  be  derivative;  viz.,  the  righteousness  that  was 
normally  and  forever  to  be,  unto,  and  upon,  all  them 
that  believe. 

Here  then  is  the  grand  renewing  office  and  aim  of  the 
gospel  of  Christ.     He  comes  to  men-  groping  in  a  state 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  433 

of  separation  from  God,  consciously  not  even  with  their 
own  standards  of  good,  and,  what  is  more,  consciously 
not  able  to  be — self-condemned  when  they  are  trying 
most  to  justify  themselves,  and  despairing  even  the 
more,  the  more  they  endeavor  to  make  themselves 
righteous  by  their  own  works — to  such  Christ  comes 
forth,  out  of  the  righteousness  of  God,  and  also  in  the 
righteousness  of  God,  that  he  may  be  the  righteousness 
of  God  upon  all  them  that  believe,  and  are  so  brought 
close  enough  to  him  in  their  faith,  to  receive  his  inspi- 
rations. And  this  is  the  state  of  justification,  not  be- 
cause some  debt  is  made  even,  by  the  penal  suffering 
of  Christ,  but  because  that  normal  connection  with  God 
is  restored  by  his  sacrifice,  which  permits  the  righteous- 
\.f  sing  of  God  to  renew  its  everlasting  flow. 

r  -f^T   When  I  speak  thus  of  the  connection  with  God  as 

,^being  restored,  by  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  let  me  not  be 

understood  as  meaning,  by  the  sacrifice,  only  what  is 

,'^1- tenderly  sympathetic  and  submissive  in  Christ's  death. 

fi\  I  include  all  that  is  energetic,  strong,  and  piercing;  his 
warnings,  his  doctrines  of  punishment  and  judgment, 
all  that  is  done  for  the  law  before  government,  by  his 
powerful  ministry  and  doctrine.  .His  sacrifice  is  no 
mere  suit  or  plaint  of  weakness,  for  the  righteousness 
of  God  is  in  it.  When  the  metallic  ring  of  principle,  or 
everlasting  right,  is  heard  in  the  agonies  and  quakings 
of  the  cross,  the  sacrifice  becomes  itself  a  sword  of  con- 
viction, piercing  irresistibly  through  the  subject,  and 
causing  him  to  quiver,  as  it  were,  on  the  point  by  which 
he  is  fastened.  Mere  sympathy,  as  we  commonly  speak, 

37 


434  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

is  no  great  power ;  it  must  be  somehow  a  tremendous 
sympathy,  to  have  the  true  divine  efficacy.  Hence  the 
glorious  justifying  efficacy  of  Christ;  because  the  right- 
eousness of  God  is  declared  in  his  sacrifice.  We  pass 
now  to  consider — 

II.  The  relation  of  faith  to  justification.  Though 
the  righteousness  of  God  is  declared  and  made  to  shine 

Faith  how  re-  w^  ^ts  true  divine  luster  and  glory  by 
lated  to  justifica-  Christ,  still  the  justification  is  not  con- 
ceived to  be  an  accomplished  fact,  as 
indeed  it  never  can  be,  prior  to  faith  in  the  subject.  It 
is  justification  by  faith  and  not  without — "  and  the  jus- 
tifier  of  him  that  believeth  in  Jesus."  What  is  this  faith, 
and  why  is  it  necessary  ? 

It  is  not  the  belief  that  Christ  has  come  to  even  our 
account  with  justice;  neither  is  it  the  belief  that  he  has 
obtained  a  surplus  merit,  which  is  offered,  over  and 
above,  as  a  positive  righteousness  and  set  to  our  credit, 
if  we  will  have  it.  Neither  of  the  two  is  a  fact,  or  at  all 
credible  any  way.  Neither  would  both,  if  believed  as 
mere  facts,  do  any  thing  more  for  us  than  a  belief  in  any 
other  facts.  Our  sins  do  not  fly  away  because  we  be- 
lieve in  a  fact  of  any  kind.  We  can  even  believe  in  all 
the  historic  facts  of  Christianity,  as  thousands  do,  with- 
out being  any  the  more  truly  justified. 

No,  the  real  faith  is  this,  and  very  little  intelligence 
is  required  to  see  the  necessity  of  it ;  viz.,  the  trusting 
of  one's  self  over,  sinner  to  Saviour,  to  be  in  him,  and 
of  him,  and  new  charactered  by  him ;  because  it  is  only 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH. 


435 


in  that  way  that  the  power  of  Christ  gets  opportunity  to 
work.  So  the  sinner  is  justified,  and  the  justification  is 
a  most  vital  affair;  "the  justification  of  Faith  de- 
life."  The  true  account  of  it  is  that  Jesus,  fined- 
coming  into  the  world,  with  ail  God's  righteousness  upon 
him,  declaring  it  to  guilty  souls  in  all  the  manifold  evi- 
dences of  his  life  and  passion,  wins  their  faith,  and  by 
that  faith  they  are  connected  again  with  the  life  of  God, 
and  filled  and  overspread  with  his  righteousness.  And 
there  springs  up,  in  this  reconnection  of  the  soul  with 
God's  righteousness,  a  perfect  liberty  and  confidence ; 
for  it  is  no  more  trying  to  climb  up  into  a  righteous  con- 
sciousness and  confidence  by  itself,  but  it  has  the  right- 
eousness by  derivation ;  flowing  down  upon  it,  into  it, 
and  through  it,  from  the  everlasting  spring  of  God's  ex- 
cellence. And  just  here  it  is  that  Christianity  wins  its 
triumph.  It  shows  man  how  to  be  free  in  good  and 
makes  it  possible.  The  best  that  all  other  religions  and 
moralities  can  do,  is  to  institute  a  practice  of  works,  and 
a  climbing  up  into  perfection  by  our  own  righteous 
deeds ;  but  the  gospel  of  Jesus  comes  to  our  relief,  in 
showing  us  how  to  find  righteousness,  and  have  it  as 
an  eternal  inspiration ;  "  even  the  righteousness  of  God 
that  is  by  the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ  unto  all  and^npon^all 
them  that  believe."*  In  it  we  do  not  climb,  but  rest ; 
we  goad  ourselves  into  no  impossibilities,  groan  under 
no  bondage  that  we  can  not  lift ;  sink  into  no  deep 
mires  because  we  try  to  struggle  out.  We  have  a  pos- 
sible righteousness,  because  it  is  not  tours\  but  God's ; 

I 


*  Rom.  iii,  22. 


436  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

Christ  received  by  our  faith,  to  be  upon  us  and  for  us, 
all  that  we  could  wish  to  be  for  ourselves.  This  is  the 
transcendent  distinction,  the  practically  sublime  glory 
of  our  gospel,  our  great  all- truth — Justification  by  Faith. 
Here  is  conquered  the  grandest  of  all  problems,  how  to 
put  confidence  in  the  bosom  of  guilt,  and  settle  a  plat- 
form of  virtue,  that  shall  make  duty  free  and  joyful  un- 
der all  conscious  disabilities. 

Here  it  was  that  Luther  broke  into  heaven,  as  it  were, 
and  a  bewilderment  of  change  that  he  could  not,  for  the 

Luther's  great  time>  understand.  He  had  been  trying  to 
discovery  of  jus-  be  justified  by  works ;  that  is,  by  fastings, 
penances,  alms,  vigils,  wearing  down  the 
body  under  the  load  of  his  sins,  and  crying  to  God  in 
his  cell,  day  and  night,  for  some  deliverance  that  should 
ease  the  torment  of  his  still  and  alwaj^s  self-condemning 
soul.  A  right  word  from  Staupitz  let  him  see  the  fool 
that  he  was — that  Christ  would  take  him  because  he 
was  guilty ;  having  died  for  him  because  he  was  guilty, 
and  not  because  he  was  righteous.  At  that  point  broke 
in,  what  light  and  confidence !  His  emancipated  soul 
burst  off  all  its  chains  in  a  moment,  and  took,  as  it 
were,  the  range  of  heaven  in  its  liberty.  He  was  new 
himself,  the  world  was  new,  the  gospel  was  new.  It 
had  not  entered  into  his  heart  to  conceive  the  things 
that  were  freely  given  him  of  God,  but  now  he  has  them 
all  at  once.  Justification  by  faith,  justification  by  faith 
—his  great  soul  is  full  of  it ;  he  must  preach  it,  he  must 
fight  for  it,  die  for  it,  know  nothing  else. 

In  the  inspiration  of  this  truth  it  was,  that  his  great 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  437 

career  as  a  reformer  and  spiritual  hero  began.  If  any 
thing  will  make  a  man  a  hero,  it  will  be  the  righteous- 
ness of  God  upon  him,  and  the  confidence  Lllt}ier»3  hea(j 
he  gets  in  the  sense  of  it.  If  he  can  be  did  not  under- 

T  ,  f  .-i  •          •,        -n    -i       •       .1        stand  his  heart. 

eloquent  for  any  thing,  it  will  be  in  the 
testimony  of  what  Christ  is  to  him,  in  the  now  glorified 
consciousness  of  his  inward  life.  But  we  must  not  fall 
into  a  very  great  mistake  here.  Luther  is,  in  fact,  two, 
not  one;  viz.,  a  Christian,  and  a  theologian;  and  his 
Christian  justification  by  faith,  that  which  puts  such  a 
grand  impulsion  into  his  feeling,  and  raises  the  tone  of 
his  manly  parts  to  such  a  pitch  of  vigor,  is  a  very  differ- 
ent, altogether  separate  matter,  from  that  theologic  con- 
triving of  his  head,  which  he  took  so  confidently  for  the 
certain  equivalent.  Taking  this  latter,  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  find  how  any  one  should  become  much  of  a  hero, 
or  be  lifted  to  the  pitch  of  any  great  sentiment,  in  it.  In- 
deed, the  very  great  wonder  is,  that  a  man  so  intelligent 
should  imagine,  for  a  moment,  that  he  was  fired  with  a 
passion  so  mighty,  and  a  -joy  so  transcendent,  by  the 
fact  that  an  innocent  being  had  taken  his  sins  and 
evened  the  account  of  justice  by  suffering  their  punish- 
ment !  This  he  thought  he  believed ;  but  we  are  not 
obliged  to  believe  that  he  did.  Eeally  believing  it,  and 
conceiving  what  it  means,  the  fact  would  have  set  his 
stout  frame  shuddering,  and  turned  his  life  to  gall.  The 
truth  indeed  appears  to  be,  that  his  heart  sailed  over  his 
theology,  and  did  not  come  down  to  see  it.  We  find 
him  contriving,  in  his  "  Epistle  to  the  Galatians,"  how 
Christ,  having  all  the  sins  of  mankind  imputed  to  him, 

87* 


438  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

%t  becomes  the  greatest  transgressor,  murderer,  adulterer, 
thief,  rebel,  and  blasphemer,  that  ever  was,  or  could  be, 
in  all  the  world ;"  and  his  doctrine  is,  that  suffering  the 
just  wrath  of  God,  for  the  sin  that  is  upon  him,  Christ 
makes  out  a  right  of  justification  for  us  before  God 
which  is  complete,  because  it  completely  satisfies  the 
law.  And  then  to  be  just  cleared  of  punishment^  and 
believe  that  he  is,  he  conceives  to  be  the  very  thingv 
that  makes  his  glorious  liberty  and  raises  the  tempest 
of  his  joy !  The  manner  appears  to  be  hideous,  the  de- 
liverance to  be  negative  and  legal  only ;  but  his  heart  is 
ranging  high  enough,  in  its  better  element — the  right- 
eousness of  God — even  not  to  be  offended  by  the  crudi- 
ties he  is  taking  for  a  gospel. 

But  this  is  not  the  first  time,  that  the  head  of  a  great 
man  has  not  been  equal  even  to  the  understanding,  or 
true  interpretation,  of  his  heart.  Indeed,  nothing  is 
more  common,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  than  for  men  of  real 
or  even  the  highest  intelligence,  to  so  far  misinterpret 
their  own  experience  in  matters  of  religion,  as  to  as- 
cribe it  to  and  find  it  springing  radically  out  of,  that 
which  has  no  sound  verity,  and  could  never  have  pro- 
duced such  an  experience.  Let  no  one  be  surprised, 
then,  that  Luther's  justification  by  faith,  that  which 
puts  his  soul  ringing  with  such  an  exultant  and  really 
sublime  liberty,  .makes  a  plunge  so  bewildering  into  ba- 
thos and  general  unreason,  when  it  comes  to  be  affirmed 
theologically  in  his  doctrine.  As  he  had  it  in  his  Chris- 
tian consciousness,  the  soul  of  his  joy,  the  rest  of  his 
confidence,  the  enlargement  of  his  gracious  liberty, 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH  489 

nothing  could  be  more  evidently  real  and  related  to  the 
J  u\  deepest  realities  of  feeling ;  but  as  he  gave  it  in  his  dog- 
matic record,  I  confess  that  calling  it  justification  by 
faith — articuj^t  stantis,  vel  cadentis  ecclesice — I  could  more 
easily  see  the  church  fall  than  believe  it.  Happily  our 
yery  great  reverence  and  admiration  for  the  man  may 
be  accommodated  in  the  confidence,  that  any  one  may 
reject  it  utterly,  and  yet  receive  all  that  his  faith  re- 
ceived in  his  justification ;  and  may  also  be  with  him  in 
profoundest  sympathy,  in  the  magnificat  he  chants,  and, 
with  such  exhaustless  eloquence  of  boasting,  reiterates, 
in  his  preaching  of  the  cross  and  the  glorious  liberty  it 
brings.  Certain  it  is  that  no  man  is  a  proper  Christian, 
who  is  not  practically,  at  least,  in  the  power  of  this 
great  truth.  If  any  thing  defines  a  Christian,  it  is  that 
he  is  one  who  seeks  and  also  finds  his  righteousness  in 
God. 

I  am  well  aware  how  insufficient  this  exposition  of 
the  great  Christian  truth,  justification  by  faith,  will  be 
to  many — to  some,  because  it  is  a  truth  that  can  be 
sufficiently  expounded,  by  nothing  but  a  living  experi- 
ence of  its  power ;  to  others,  because  they  have  already 
learned  to  find  their  experience  in  words  and  forms  of 
doctrine,  by  which  it  is  poorly,  or  even  falsely  repre- 
sented. What  questions  the  view  presented  will  en- 
counter, especially  from  this  latter  class,  I  very  well 
know,  and  will  therefore  bring  the  subject  to  a  conclu- 
sion by  answering  a  few  of  them. 

Do  we  not  then,  by  holding  a  view  of  justification  so 


440  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

essentially  subjective,  virtually  annihilate  the  distinc- 
tion between  justification  and  sanctification  ?     This  is 
,   one  of  the  questions,  and  I  answer  it  by 

Justification  and  J 

sanctification    not  saying  that  if  the  two  experiences  were 
confounded.  more  closely  reiated  than  they  are  com- 

monly supposed  to  be,  I  do  not  see  that  we  need  be 
greatly  disturbed  on  that  account.  Still  they  are  suffi- 
ciently distinct.  According  to  the  Catholic  doctrine 
they  are  virtually  identical;  because  the  "making 
just,"  or  "making  righteous,"  which  is  conceived  to  be 
the  sense  of  justification,  is  understood  to  be  a  com- 
pleted subjective  change,  one  that  goes  below  con- 
sciousness and  makes  the  soul  inherently  right — which 
is  the  very  significance  also  of  sanctification.  But  if  we 
only  conceive  the  soul  to  be  so  joined,  by  its  faith,  to 
the  righteousness  of  God,  as  to  be  rather  invested  by  it, 
or  enveloped  in  it,  than  to  be  transformed  all  through 
in  its  own  inherent  quality ;  if  the  righteoussing  goes 
on,  even  as  the  sun  goes  on  shining  when  it  makes  the 
day,  and  stops  of  necessity  when  the  faith  withdrawn 
permits  it  to  go  on  no  longer ;  then  we  have  a  very 
wide  and  palpable  distinction.  The  consciousness  of 
the  subject,  in  justification,  is  raised  in  its  order,  filled 
with  the  confidence  of  right,  set  free  from  the  bondage 
of  all  fears  and  scruples  of  legality ;  but  there  is  a  vast 
realm  back  of  the  consciousness,  or  below  it,  which  re- 
mains to  be  changed  or  sanctified,  and  never  will  be, 
except  as  a  new  habit  is  generated  by  time,  and  the 
better  consciousness  descending  into  the  secret  roots  be 
low,  gets  a  healing  into  them  more  and  more  perfect. 


CHAP,  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH, 

In  this  manner,  one  who  is  justified  at  once,  can  be 
sanctified  only  in  time ;  and  one  who  is  completely  jus-    £ 
tified  is  only  incipiently  sanctified ;  and  one  who  has 
consciously  "yielded  his  members  as  instruments  of     J 
righteousness  unto  God,"  may  discover  even  more  and 
more  distinctly,  and,  by  manifold  tokens,  a  law  in  his     ^J 
members  not  yet  sanctified  away.     There  is  also  a  cer-      £ 
tain  reference  in  justification  to  one's  standing  in  the    vjj^ 
everlasting  law ;  whereas  sanctification  refers  more  es- 
pecially to  the  conscious  purity  of  the  soul's  aims,  and 
the  separation  of  its  moral  habit  from  evil.     By  another     \y 
distinction,  justification  is  the  purgation  of  the  con- 
science, and  sanctification  a  cleansing  of  the  soul's  af- 
fections and  passions.     Both  of  course  are  operated  by 
God's  inspirations,  and  are  operated  only  in  and  through 
the  faith  of  the  subject. 

There  is  indeed  no  objection  to  saying  that,  in  a  cer- 
tain general  way,  they  are  one — just  as  faith  is  one  with 
love,  and  love  with  regeneration,  and  this  with  genuine 
repentance,  and  all  good  states  with  all  others.  The 
same  divine  Kfe  or  quickening  of  God  is  supposed  in 
every  sort  of  holy  exercise,  and  the  different  names  we 
give  it  represent  real  and  important  differences  of  mean- 
ing, accordingly  as  we  consider  the  new  life  quickened 
in  relation  to  our  own  agency,  or  to  God's,  or  to  means 
accepted,  trusts  reposed,  or  effects  wrought.  In  the 
same  way,  justification  is  sanctification,  and  both  are 
faith;  and  yet  their  difference  is  by  no  means  anni- 
hilated. 

Another  question  likely  to  be  raised  in  the  way  of 


442  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

objection  is,  whether,  in  the  kind  of  justification  stated, 
I  do  not  give  in  to  the  rather  antiquated  notion  of  im- 
How  related  to  puted  righteousness  ?  To  this  I  answer, 
imputation.  that  if  the  notion  supposed  to  be  thus 
antiquated,  is  the  theologic  fiction  of  a  surplus  obedi- 
ence, over  and  above  what  was  due  from  Christ  as  a 
man — contributed  by  him  in  pains  and  acts  of  duty 
from  the  obedience  of  his  higher  nature — which 
surplus  is  imputed  to  us  and  reckoned  to  our  account, 
such  imputation  is  plainly  enough  rejected ;  still  there 
will  be  left  the  grand,  experimental,  Scripture  truth  of 
imputed  righteousness,  a  truth  never  more  to  be  anti- 
quated, than  holiness  itself. 

The  theologic  fiction  more  fully  stated  appears  to 
have  been  something  like  this :  that  Christ,  taken  sim- 
ply as  a  man,  was  under  all  the  obligations  that  be- 
long to  a  man ;  therefore  that  he  was  only  righteous  as 
he  should  be  in  fulfilling  those  obligations,  and  had  no 
righteousness  to  spare ;  but  that,  as  being  the  God-man, 
he  was  under  no  such  obligations ;  whence  it  resulted 
that,  by  his  twofold  obedience,  passive  and  active,  he 
gained  two  kinds  of  surplus  righteousness ;  a  passive  to 
stand  in  the  place  of  our  punishment  and  be  a  complete 
satisfaction  for  it,  and  an  active  to  be  set  to  our  account 
as  being  our  positive  obedience — both  received  by  im- 
putation. •  And  so  we  are  justified  and  saved  by  a 
double  imputed  righteousness,  one  to  be  our  suffered 
penalty,  the  other  to  be  such  an  obedience  for  us  as  will 
put  us  even  with  the  precept  of  the  law.  It  is  even  a 
sad  office  to  recite  the  scholastic  jingle  of  such  a  scheme, 


CHAP.  VII.       JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  443 

made  up  and  received  for  a  gospel.  Plainly  it  is  all  a 
fiction.  The  distinction  of  a  passive  and  active  obedi- 
ence is  a  fiction;  the  passive  obedience  being  just  as 
voluntary  as  the  active,  and  therefore  just  as  active. 
The  assumption  that  Christ,  to  put  righteousness  upon 
us,  must  provide  a  spare  righteousness  not  wanted  for 
himself,  is  a  fiction  that  excludes  even  the  possible  koi- 
nonia  of  the  righteousness  of  God.  And  a  still  greater 
fiction  is  the  totally  impossible  conception  of  a  surplus 
righteousness.  Christ  was  just  as  righteous  as  he  should 
be,  neither  more  nor  less,  and  the  beauty  of  his  sacrifice 
lay  in  the  fact,  not  that  it  overlapped  the  eternal  law, 
but  that  it  so  exactly  fulfilled  that  law.  His  merit 
therefore  was  not  that  he  was  better  than  he  should  be, 
but  all  that  he  should  be ;  for  if  he  was  perfect  without 
the  surplus,  then  he  was  more  than  perfect  with  it,  and 
we  are  left  holding  the  opinion,  that  there  is  a  right- 
eousness above  and  outside  of  perfection !  Still  again 
the  imputation  of  such  a  perfection  to  us,  so  that  we 
shall  have  the  credit  of  it,  is  a  fiction  also  of  the  coldest, 
most  unfructifying  kind,  and  impossible  even  at  that. 
What  has  any  such  pile  of  merit  in  Christ,  be  it  suffer- 
ing, or  sacrifice,  or  punishment,  or  active  righteousness, 
to  do  with  my  personal  deserts  ?  If  a  thousand  worlds- 
full  of  the  surplus  had  been  provided  for  me,  I  should 
be  none  the  less  ill  deserving,  if  I  had  the  total  reckon- 
ing in  possession. 

The  experimental,  never-to-be  antiquated,  Scripture 
truth  of  imputed  righteousness,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
this: — That  the  soul,  when  it  is  gained  to  faith,  is 


JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  IIL 


JK   brou 
"*  rii 


brought  back,  according  to  the  degree  of  faith,  into  its 
original, 4iormal  relation  to  Gojl;  to  be  invested  in  God's 
light,  feeling,  character — in  one  word,  righteousness — and 
live  derivatively  from  Him.  It  is  not  made  righteous, 
in  the  sense  of  being  set  in  a  state  of  self-centered  right- 
eousness, to  be  maintained  by  an  ability  complete  in 
the  person,  but  it  is  made  righteous  in  the  sense  of  be- 
ing always  to  be  made  righteous ;  just  as  the  day  is 
made  luminous,  not  by  the  light  of  sunrise  staying  in  it, 
or  held  fast  by  it,  but  by  the  ceaseless  outflow  of  the  so- 
lar effulgence.  Considered  in  this  view,  the  sinning 
man  justified  is  never  thought  of  as  being,  or  to  be,  just 
in  himself;  but  he  is  to  be  counted  so,  be  so  by  impu- 
tation, because  his  faith  holds  him  to  a  relation  to  God, 
where  the  sun  of  His  righteousness  will  be  forever  gild- 
ing him  with  its  fresh  radiations.  Thus  Abraham  be- 
lieved God  enough  to  become  the  friend  of  God — say- 
ing nothing  of  justice  satisfied,  nothing  of  surplus  merit, 
nothing  of  Christ  whatever — and  it  was  imputed  to  him 
for  righteousness.  No  soul  comes  into  such  a  relation 
of  trust,  without  having  God's  investment  upon  it ;  and 
whatever  there  may  be  in  God's  righteousness — love, 
truth,  sacrifice — will  be  rightfully  imputed,  or  counted  to 
be  in  it,  because,  being  united  to  Him,  it  will  have  them 
coming  over  derivatively  from  Him.  Precisely  here 
therefore,  in  this  most  sublimely  practical  of  all  truths, 
imputed  righteousness,  Christianity  culminates.  Here 
we  have  coming  upon  us,  or  upon  our  faith,  all  that  we 
most  want,  whether  for  our  confidence,  or  the  complete 
deliverance  and  upraising  of  our  guilty  and  dreadfully 


CHAP.  VII.      JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.  445 

enthralled  nature.  Here  we  triumph.  There  is  there- 
fore now  no  condemnation,  the  law  of  the  spirit  of  life 
in  Christ  Jesus  hath  made  us  free.  If  we  had  a  right- 
eousness of  the  law  to  work  out,  we  should  feel  a  dread- 
ful captivity  upon  us.  If  we  were  put  into  the  key  of 
righteous  living,  and  then,  being  so  started,  were  left  to 
keep  the  key  ourselves,  by  manipulating  our  own 
thoughts,  affections,  actions,  in  a  way  of  self-superin- 
tendence, the  practice  would  be  so  artificial,  so  inhe- 
rently weak,  as  to  pitch  us  into  utter  despair  in  a  single 
day.  Nothing  meets  our  want,  but  to  have  our  life  and 
righteoussing  in  God,  thus  to  be  kept  in  liberty  and  vic- 
tory always  by  our  trust  in  Him.  Calling  this  imputed 
righteousness,  it  is  no  conceit  of  theology,  no  fiction,  but 
the  grandest  and  most  life-giving  of  all  the  Christian 
truths. 

"We  have  this  imputation  also  in  another  form  that  is 
equally  natural  and  practical.  Thus,  instead  of  having 
our  faith  imputed  unto  us  for  righteous-  We  nlgo  to  have 
ness,  we  ourselves  teach  our  faith  to  lo-  our  righteousness 
catcall  our  righteousness  putatively  in  Putativcly  in  God- 
God;  saying  "The  Lord  our  righteousness,"  "Christ 
who  is  our  life,"  "  made  unto  us  righteousness ;"  as  if 
the  stock  of  our  virtue,  or  holiness,  were  laid  up  for  us 
in  God.  All  the  hope  of  our  character  that  is  to  be  we 
place,  not  in  the  inherent  good  we  are  to  work  out,  or 
become  in  ourselves,  but  in  the  capital  stock  that  is 
funded  for  us  in  Him.  And  then  the  character,  the 
righteousness,  is  the  more  dear  to  us,  because  it  is  to 
have  so  high  a  spring;  and  God  is  the  more  dear  to  us, 

38 


446  JUSTIFICATION    BY    FAITH.         PART  III. 

that  lie  will  have  us  hang  upon  him  by  our  faith,  for  a 
matter  so  divine.  And  the  joy  also,  the  confidence,  the 
assurance  and  rest — all  that  we  include  in  our  justifi- 
cation— is  the  more  sublimely  dear,  that  we  have  it  on 
a  footing  of  permitted  unity  with  God  so  transforming 
and  glorious.  There  is,  in  short,  no  truth  that  is  richer 
and  fuller  of  meaning  and  power,  than  this  same  figure 
of  mental  imputation,  in  which  we  behold  our  character 
laid  up  and  funded  for  us  in  the  righteousness  of  God. 
In  one  view  it  is  not  true ;  there  is  no  such  quantity,  or 
substance,  separate  from  him,  and  laid  up  in  store  for 
us ;  but  there  is  a  power  in  him.  everlastingly  able  to 
beget  in  us,  or  keep  flowing  over  upon  us,  every  gift 
our  sin  most  needs ;  and  this  we  represent  to  our  hearts, 
by  conceiving,  in  a  figure,  that  we  have  a  stock,  just 
what  we  call  u  our  righteousness,"  laid  up  for  us  even 
beforehand,  in  the  sublime  quarter-mastering  of  his 
love. 

It  is  no  fault  then  of  our  doctrine  of  justification  by 
faith,  that  it  favors  a  notion  of  imputed  righteousness ; 
for  in  just  this  fact  it  is,  that  the  gospel  takes  us  out  of 
the  bondage  of  works  into  a  really  new  divine  liberty. 
Here,  in  fact,  is  the  grand  triumph  of  Christianity ;  viz., 
in  the  new  style  of  righteousness  inaugurated,  which 
makes  the  footing  even  of  a  sinner  good,  and  helps  the 
striving  bondman  of  duty  to  be  free ;  even  the  right- 
eousness of  God  that  is  by  faith  of  Jesus  Christ,  unto 
all,  and  upon  all  them  that  believe.  "When  this  is  anti- 
quated, just  then  also  will  salvation  be. 


PART    IV. 

SACRIFICIAL    SYMBOLS    AND 
THEIR    USES. 


CHAPTER  I. 

SACRIFICE  AND   BLOOD  AND  THE   LUSTRAL  FIGURES. 

BY  the  previous  exposition,  Christ  is  shown  to  be  a 
Saviour,  not  as  being  a  ground  of  justification,  but  as 
being  the  Moral  Power  of  God  upon  us,  so  a  power  of 
salvation.  His  work  terminates,  not  in  the  release  of 
penalties  by  due  compensation,  but  in  the  transforma- 
tion of  character,  and  the  rescue,  in  that  manner,  of 
guilty  men  from  the  retributive  causations  provoked  by 
their  sin.  He  does  not  prepare  the  remission  of  sins  in 
the  sense  of  a  mere  letting  go,  but  he  executes  the  re- 
mission, by  taking  away  the  sins',  and  dispensing  the 
justification  of  life.  This  one  word  Life  is  the  con- 
densed import  of  all  that  he  is,  or  undertakes  to  be. 

In  the  unfolding  of  this  view,  I  have  not  overlooked, 
or  at  all  neglected,  the  representations  of  Scripture; 
every  thing  advanced  has  been  carefully  supported  and 
fortified  by  ample  citations,  fairly  and  reverently,  but 
not  always  traditionally  interpreted.  Some,  however, 
may  be  disappointed,  or  perhaps  offended,  by  the  slight 
attention  I  have  paid  thus  far  to  a  large  class  of  phrases 
and  figures  derived  from  the  ceremonial  law  and  the 
uses  of  the  altar,  and  brought  over,  by  a  second  appli- 
cation, to  express  the  practical  verities  of  the  cross. 

38* 


450  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

But  my  design  Las  not  been  to  put  any  slight  on  these 
sacrificial  terminologies.  I  have  only  adjourned  them 
to  a  future  discussion  by  themselves,  because  of  the  un- 
happy confusion  it  would  create  in  our  trains  of 
thought,  if  they  were  brought  in  to  be  canvassed,  here 
and  there,  at  points  of  casual  application.  We  have 
now  reached  a  point,  where  the  attention  may  be  given 
them  which  their  very  great  importance  demands. 

I  propose  therefore,  in  this  and  the  next  following 
chapter,  to  ascertain,  if  possible,  their  precise  Christian 

The  sacrificial  meaning>  an(^  exhibit  their  true  relation 
terms  and  their  to  the  doctrine  of  Christ,  as  expounded  in 

interpretation.        ^    preceding    pageg>      j    undertake    this 

inquiry,  not  with  a  view  to  getting  sanction  for  the 
opinions  expressed,  but  in  the  conviction  rather,  that  a 
great  part  of  the  misconceptions  and  doctrinal  crudi- 
ties that  have  been  the  world's  affliction,  in  this  great- 
est of  all  matters  given  to  knowledge,  have  been  due  to 
certain  hasty,  half-investigated  impressions,  and  a  kind 
of  traditional  charlatanry  of  dogmatism  that  have 
thrown  these  ritual  terms  and  figures  out  their  proper 
and  rightful  meaning.  Eeserving  to  the  next  follow- 
ing chapter  terms  and  questions  more  secondary  in 
their  import,  I  shall  occupy  the  present  chapter  with 
a  discussion  of  the  primary  terms  sacrifice,  and  Uood, 
and  the  lustral  figures  of  cleansing  and  purifying — with 
which  the  secondary  terms  are  blended,  and  by  which, 
to  a  certain  extent,  they  must  be  explicated. 

The  whole  ground  to  be  covered  is  well  represented, 
in  a  single  passage  from  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews — 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  451 

"How  much  more  shall  the  blood  of  Christ,  who, 
through  the  eternal  Spirit,  offered  himself  without  spot 
to  God,  purge  your  conscience  from  dead  works  to 
serve  the  living  God."*  In  this  "how  much  more," 
referring  back  to  the  sacrifices  and  sprinklings  of  blood 
in  the  ritual  of  the  previous  dispensation,  we  have 
brought  into  view  the  fact  of  some  important,  divinely 
appointed  relationship  between  those  sacrifices  of  the 
old  religion,  and  the  grand  final  sacrifice  of  Christ  in 
the  new. 

If  we  speak  thus  of  a  "  divinely  appointed  relation- 
ship," we  impliedly  assume  that  the  sacrifices  were  di- 
vinely appointed.  There  has  been 

r     j  £  o  •  •  The  Hebrew  sac- 

much  debate    on   this  question,   even  rifices,  how  related 

among  Christian  teachers  themselves.  to  that  of  the  8OS~ 
The  great  Hebrew  scholar,  Spencer, 
maintains  the  opinion  that  the  Jewish  sacrifices  were 
established  by  Moses,  in  a  way  of  accommodation  to 
the  heathen  sacrifices,  in  which  his  people  had  been 
trained.  Archbishop  Tillotson  goes  still  beyond  him, 
admitting  that  even  the  Christian  sacrifice  is  an  act  of 
accommodation  to  the  prejudices  and  superstitions  of 
the  pagan  nations.  It  will  not  be  denied,  or  should 
not  be,  that  pagan  nations,  all  pagan  nations,  have 
been  ready  somehow  to  erect  altars  and  make  suit  to 
their  gods  by  sacrifices.  This  standing  confession  of 
guilt  and  apostasy  from  God  is  about  as  nearly  univer- 
sal as  dress,  or  food,  or  society.  But  the  remarkable 

*  Hebrews,  ix,  14. 


452  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

thing,  in  this  general  use  of  sacrifices,  is  that  they  take 
so  coarse  a  form,  and  one  so  evidently  tinged  with  su- 
perstition. 

By  a  most  learned  and  thorough  canvassing  of  proofs, 
Dr.  Magee  *  has  shown  the  truly  appalling  fact  that  hu- 

Human  sacrifi-  man  sacr^ces  ^ave  ^een  offered  by  every 
oes,  Pagan,  nev-  people  of  the  known  world  except  the 
13  *  <  Jews.  And  a  guilty  fear,  just  as  conspic- 
uous and  just  as  nearly  universal,  has  prevailed,  that 
the  gods  are  up  in  their  wrath  and  must  have  blood  to 
appease  them.  Now  if  the  Jewish  people  had  borrowed 
their  sacrifices  from  the  pagan  peoples,  whence  comes 
it  that  they  never  show  a  trace  of  any  such  superstition — 
except  in  cases  where  it  is  reproved  and  condemned — and 
never  once  in  their  history  offer  a  human  sacrifice  ?  For 
the  very  point  of  the  command  upon  Abraham  to  sacri- 
fice his  son  is,  to  show  him,  in  .the  end,  that  no  such 
sacrifice  is  wanted — that  obeying  God  is  the  deepest  re- 
ality of  sacrifice.  Abraham  had  never  read  Edwards 
on  the  Affections,  knew  nothing  of  a  piety  by  defini- 
tion ;  and  the  object  is  to  give  him  a  lesson  transaction- 
ally,  such  that,  when  he  is  put  through  the  lesson,  he 
shall  have  the  fact  established  implicitly  in  his  heart — 
just  as  Jacob  learned  to  pray  transactionally,  by  his 
wrestling  with  the  angel.  Exactly  the  same  lesson  was 
learned  transactionally,  or  was  to  be,  in  all  the  sacri- 
fices ;  only  in  a  less  impressive,  and  thoroughly  search- 
ing, and  fearfully  trying,  manner. 

But  supposing  the  Hebrew  sacrifices  not  to  have 

*  Vol.  I,  P.  74,  §§. 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  453 

been  derived,  in  any  sense,  from  the  pagans,  as  they 
even  visibly  were  not,  still  it  is  a  question  how  they 
originated,  and  especially  whether  they 

J  .  J        Sacrifices  both 

were  taken  up  spontaneously,  or  were  in-   human  and  di- 

stituted  by  the  direction  of  God?     And  vine  in  their  ori- 
gin, 
here  again  there  is  even  a  more  persistent 

debate  that  is  not  yet  ended ;  as  indeed  it  never  can  be 
till  the  question  is  more  skillfully  stated.  For  if  they 
were  instituted  by  God,  it  could  only  be  by  God  acting 
through  the  sentiments,  and  wants,  and  guilty  yearn- 
ings, of  men.  They  were  instituted  doubtless  just  as 
language  was;  viz.,  by  a  divine  instigation  acting 
through  human  instincts  and  voices.  Man  was  made 
for  language,  and  had,  in  his  very  nature,  a  language 
faculty.  But  God's  work  was  not  ended  when  that 
faculty  was  given,  it  was  only  begun ;  he  goes  on  with 
it  providentially  and  by  secret  helps  of  instigation, 
causing  it  to  be  put  forth,  and  guiding  it  by  his  educat- 
ing and  pervasive  intelligence,  and  so  the  resulting  fact 
of  language  is  completed.  In  the  same  manner,  human 
souls  were  made  for  religion,  and  the  fact  of  a  fall  into 
sin  made  the  want  of  it  even  more  urgent.  There  was 
now  an  aching  after  God,  and  a  dreadful  oppression  felt 
in  the  sense  of  separation  from  God.  And  what  could 
occur  more  naturally,  than  some  distinct  effort  to  be 
reconciled  to  God.  In  this  way,  minds  were  put  on  the 
stretch  to  find  some  way  of  expressing  penitence,  self- 
mortification,  homage,  and  the  tender  invocation  of 
mercy.  Observing  thus  how  it  was  the  way  of  smoke 
to  go  up  heavenward,  what  hint  could  they  take  more 


454  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

naturally,  than  to  make  it  the  vehicle  of  religion ; 
bringing  their  choicest,  finest  animals,  such  as  they  took 
even  for  their  food,  and  the  expression  of  their  hospi- 
tality, and  sending  up  their  cloud  of  worshipful  hom- 
age, by  offering  them  in  fire  upon  their  altars?  Mean- 
time God  is  turning  them  inwardly,  by  his  secret  inspi- 
rations, to  the  same  thing;  wanting  as  much  to  help 
them  in  being  reconciled  to  him,  as  they  to  be  recon- 
ciled. And  so,  being  in  vicarious  sacrifice  Himself,  he 
prepares  them  to  the  very  patterns  of  the  heavenly 
things  in  Himself,  and  gets  them  configured  to  the  ever- 
lasting sacrifice,  afterwards  to  be  revealed  in  his  Son. 
For  there  is  a  correspondence  here,  and  all  these  rites,  in 
which  for  a  time  the  souls  of  men  are  to  be  trained, 
are  so  related  to  Christ  and  are  so  prepared  to  be,  that 
when  he  is  offered,  once  for  all,  their  idea  is  fulfilled ; 
whereupon  the  outward  names  they  generate  are  to  rise 
into  spiritual  word-figures,  for  the  sufficient  expression 
of  his  otherwise  transcendent,  inexpressible  grace. 

Sacrifices  then  are  not  the  mere  spontaneous  contriv- 
ances of  men,  but  the  contrivances  of  men  whose  con- 
trivings  are  impelled  and  guided  and  fashioned  by  God 
— just  as  truly  appointed  by  God,  as  if  they  were  or- 
dered by  some  vocal  utterance  from  heaven.  They  re- 
late, in  fact,  to  all  God's  future  in  the  kingdom  of  his 
Son,  and  are  as  truly  necessary,  it  may  be,  to  that  fu- 
ture as  the  incarnation  itself.  Nay,  they  are  themselves 
a  kind  of  incarnation  before  the  time.  Assuming  thus 
a  clearly  divine  origin  for  them,  we  go  on  to  consider 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  455 

more  distinctly  what  is  not  their  office,  and  also  what  it 
is.  And  here  the  first  thing  necessary  is,  to  rule  out 
certain  false  teachings  or  assumptions  which  have  cre- 
ated inversions  of  order  and  thrown  the  whole  subject 
into  confusion. 

Thus  it  is  maintained  extensively,  that  we  are  to  get 
our  conceptions  of  the  old  sacrifices  from  the  sacrifice  of 
Christ,  taking  them  as  shadows  cast  Not  to  be  inUr_ 
backward  from  the  sun.  But  this  is  preted  by  the  sao- 
very  much  like  assuming,  that  we  are  r 
to  get  our  notions  of  the  heart,  as  a  physical  organ, 
from  our  understanding  of  the  heart  as  the  seat  of  spir- 
itual life ;  or  to  get  our  notions  of  a  straight  line  from 
our  understanding  of  right,  or  rectitude.  We  invert 
the  order  of  nature  in  this  manner,  and  reverse  the 
whole  process  of  language.  The  maxim,  "first  that 
which  is  natural,  afterwards  that  is  spiritual,"  we  turn 
quite  about,  and  instead  of  conceiving  that  physical 
things  are  given  to  be  the  bases  of  words,  or  word- 
figures  representing  spiritual  truths,  we  say  that  the 
physical  objects  were  fashioned  after  the  ideas,  after  the 
figures,  to  be  coarser  substances  correspondent  with  the 
spiritual  realities  represented  by  them.  If  we  know 
any  thing,  we  know  that  the  whole  process  of  genera- 
tion in  language  runs  the  other  way,  and  that  the  fig- 
ures come  after  the  facts,  the  higher  spiritual  meanings 
after,  and  out  of,  the  physical  roots  on  which  they  grow. 

It  is  very  true  that  God,  in  creating  the  outward 
forms  of  things,  has  a  reference  of  forecast  to  the  uses 
they  will  serve  as  forms  of  thought  and  spirit ;  a  refer- 


456  SACKIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

ence,  for  example,  in  bodily  pain,  to  the  generation  of 
the  legal  word  penalty,  as  a  word  of  religion  ;  a  refer- 
And  yet  they  cnce  *n  ^G  formalities  of  the  ritual  sacri- 
are  meant  for  fice  to  the  uses  they  may  fill,  as  terms 
Christian  uses.  and  ^^  in  ^  ^presentation  .  of 


Christ,  the  grand  spiritual  sacrifice.  It  is  also  true  that 
we,  looking  back  on  the  ancient  sacrifices,  after  appre- 
hending the  glorious  consummation  of  their  meaning  in 
Christ,  may  regard  them  with  a  higher  respect,  and 
with  many  different  impressions;  just  as  we  may  think 
of  the  heart  and  indeed  of  the  whole  human  body,  in  a 
different  manner,  after  we  have  seen,  with  Mr.  Wilkin- 
son, the  whole  spiritual  nature  represented  by  it,  and 
coursing,  and  flowing,  and  finding  fit  procession,  in  it. 
But  these  different  impressions  are  only  impressions, 
and  no  man  would  undertake,  in  having  them,  to  draw 
out  the  physiology  of  the  human  body  from  them.  No 
more  will  any  sound  teacher  undertake  to  show  what 
the  ancient  sacrifices  were,  or  meant,  from  the  sacrifice 
of  Christ,  for  which  they  have  provided  the  necessary 
nomenclature. 

Clearly  no  such  method  of  interpretation  is  admissi- 
ble. "We  can  not  construe  meanings  backward,  but  we 
must  follow  them  out  in  that  progressive  way,  in  which 
they  are  prepared.  If  we  are  to  understand  the  sacri- 
fices, we  must  take  them  in  their  outward  forms,  and 
in  the  meaning  they  had  to  the  people  that  used  them, 
just  as  we  take  all  the  physical  roots  of  language  ; 
and  then,  having  found  what  they  were  in  that  first 
stage  of  use,  we  must  go  on  to  conceive  what  Christ 


CHAP.  L        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  457 

will  have  them  signify,  in  the  higher  uses  of  his  spirit- 
ual sacrifice. 

We  have  another  inversion  of  time  and  order  equally 
mistaken,  when  it  is  maintained  that  the  sacrifices  were 
given  to  be  types,  to  the  worshipers 

J  *  Not  given  to  the 

that  used  them,  of  Christ  and  his  death    W0rshipcrs  to  be 


as  a  ground  of  forgiveness  for  sins.  ^P*;8  to  them  of 
They  are  certainly  "  types,"  "  shadows," 
when  looked  back  upon  by  us,  of  good  things  that  were 
to  come  ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  they  were  either 
types,  or  shadows,  or  any  thing  but  simple  facts  of 
knowledge  and  practical  observance,  to  the  people  who 
were  in  them.  Nor  is  there  any  the  least  probability 
that,  in  using  them,  they  were  taking  a  gospel  by  fore- 
cast. There  is  no  lisp  of  any  such  impression  in  the 
sentiments  they  express,  either  at,  or  about,  their  sacri- 
ficial worship.  The  prophets  themselves  could  as  little 
understand  "  what,"  as  "  what  manner  of  time,  the  Spirit 
of  Christ  that  was  in  them  did  signify,"  when  testifying 
of  the  Messiah  to  come.  Not  even  Christ's  own  disci- 
ples, instructed  by  his  teachings  for  three  whole  years, 
had  any  conception  at  all,  or  even  suspicion,  of  the  ap- 
pointed correspondence  between  his  suffering  life  and 
death  and  the  sacrifices  of  the  law,  until  the  descent  of 
the  Spirit,  after  his  death,  gave  them  discernment  of 
such  a  correspondence.  Is  it  then  to  be  conceived,  that 
these  sensuous,  simple-minded,  first  men  of  the  world 
outreached  all  their  prophets,  and  even  the  carefully 
taught  hearers  of  Jesus,  and  got  their  salvation  at  the 
sacrifice  of  lambs  and  bullocks,  by  embracing  a  Christ 

39 


458  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

before  his  coming,  whose  prefiguration,  in  such  sacri- 
fices, not  even  these  could  understand,  or  imagine,  for 
whole  weeks  after  his  sacrifice  was  accomplished? 
Such  a  conceit  is  over-theoretical  and  scholastic ;  it  is 
theologic  moonshine,  not  the  true  sunlight  of  saber 
Christian  opinion. 

This  also  was  too  nearly  true  of  all  the  immense 

type-learning  that  once  figured  so  conspicuously  in  the 

Scripture  interpretations  of   this    and 

And  yet  even  .  . 

necessary  as  types  other  subjects.  It  is  very  true  that  the 
of  Christian  lan-  ancient  sacrifices  were,  and  were  given 
to  be,  types  of  the  higher  sacrifice  of 
Christ.  Not,  however,  in  the  sense  that  they  were 
such  to  the  worshipers  in  them,  but  in  that  common, 
widely  general,  always  rational  sense,  that  all  physical 
objects  and  relations,  taken  up  as  roots  of  language,  are 
types  and  are  designed  to  be,  of  the  spiritual  meanings 
to  be  figured  by  them,  or  built  into  spiritual  words 
upon  them — the  physical  heart  to  be  the  radical  image 
and  name  of  the  spiritual  disposition,  good  or  bad ;  the 
straight  line  [rectus,  right]  to  be  the  natural  word-type 
of  duty  and  righteousness.  A  type  is,  in  this  view,  a 
natural  analogon,  or  figure,  of  some  mental,  or  spiritual 
idea ;  a  thing  in  form,  to  represent,  and  be  the  name  of, 
what  is  out  of  all  physical  conditions,  and  therefore  has 
no  form.  And  the  outward  world  itself  is  a  grand  nat- 
ural furniture  of  typology,  out  of  which  the  matters  of 
thought,  feeling,  unseen  being,  unseen  states  and  worlds 
of  being,  are  always  getting,  and  to  get,  their  nomen- 
clature. 


CHAP.  L        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  459 

In  this  sense  the  ancient  sacrifices  we're,  no  doubt, 
appointed  to  be  types  of  the  higher  sacrifice;  visible 
forms,  or  analogies  that,  when  the  time  is  come,  will 
serve  as  figures,  or  bases  of  words,  to  express  and  bring 
into  familiar  use,  the  sublime  facts  and  world-renewing 
mysteries  of  the  incarnate  life  and  suffering  death  of  Je- 
sus. There  were  no  types  in  nature,  out  of  which,  as 
roots,  the  words  could  grow,  that  would  signify  a  mat- 
ter so  entirely  supernatural,  as  the  gracious  work  and 
the  incarnate  mystery  of  Christ.  The  only  way,  there- 
fore, to  get  a  language  for  him  at  all,  was  to  prepare  it 
artificially ;  and  the  ancient  ritual  of  sacrifice  appears 
to  have  been  appointed,  partly  for  this  purpose.  It  had 
other  uses  for  the  men  who  were  in  it,  but  the  analogi- 
cal relation  between  it  and  the  supernatural  grace  of 
Christ,  hereafter  to  be  represented  in  the  terms  it  is 
preparing,  is  one  that  reveals  a  positive  contrivance. 
We  discover  in  it,  both  the  strictly  divine  origin  of  the 
sacrifices,  and  that  they  were  appointed,  quite  as  much 
for  the  ulterior,  higher  uses  to  be  made  of  them,  (which 
no.  man  would  even  conceive  for  ages  to  come,)  as  for 
the  particular,  immediate,  benefit  of  the  worshipers  in 
them.  An  apostle  speaks  of  them,  it  is  true,  as  "the 
example  and  shadow  of  heavenly  things,"*  and  as  "a 
figure  for  the  time  then  present."f  They  were  indeed 
such  examples  and  figures,  and  were  used  as  rites  of 
practical  religion  for  the  time  then  present ;  but  he  only 
means  to  say  that  the  ancient  worshippers  received  im- 
pressions in  their  use,  answering  to  "  the  heavenly 

*  Heb.  viii,  5.        \  Heb.  ix,  9. 


460  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

things"  in  Christ,  without  conceiving,  either  him,  or 
the  analogical  relations  of  their  worship.  They  had 
nothing  to  say  themselves  of  a  future  sacrifice,  shad- 
owed in  their  rites ;  though  it  was  their  privilege,  apart 
from  all  such  impossible  expectations,  to  be  inducted 
into  a  temper  and  state,  in  the  use  of  them,  that  was 
after  a  heavenly  pattern — even  the  sacrifice  that  was  in 
God  and  that,  being  shadowed  in  their  forms  was  after 
wards  to  be  revealed  in  Christ  himself. 

There  is,  then,  we  perceive,  an  inherent  appointed 
relationship  between  the  ancient  sacrifices  and  the  sac- 

What  meanin  r^ce  °f  Christ,  such  that  we  shall  come 
had  they  to  the  into  the  true  sense  of  what  is  meant  by 
his  sacrifice,  offering,  blood,  only  by  an 
accurate  and  careful  discovery  of  the  meaning,  and  use, 
and  power,  and  historic  associations  of  the  ancient  sac- 
rifices. What  then  did  these  sacrifices  signify?  what 
were  they  appointed  to  do,  for  the  persons  who  accepted 
and  observed  them  as  the  cultus  of  their  religion  ? 

When  we  set  ourselves  to  answer  this  question,  we 
are  met  by  two  very  common  assumptions,  or  teach- 

Theymadenoth-  in3s» that  onlv  misdirect  ™r  search,  and 
ing  of  the  pain  of  throw  us  out  of  the  true  line  of  discov- 
ery. Thus  a  great  deal  is  made,  by 
many,  of  the  fact  that  the  animal  is  slain  for  the  sacri- 
fice— thrust  down  into  death,  it  is  conceived,  in  the 
worshiper's  place.  Quite  as  much  also  is  made,  or 
even  more,  of  the  fact  that  the  animal  suffers  pain  in 
dying,  and  thus  is  an  offering  of  so  much  pain  to  God, 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  461 

in  substitution  for  the  deserved  pain  of  the  transgressor. 
Both  these  constructions  upon  'sacrifices  belong,  it  will 
be  seen,  to  schemes  of  expiation,  or  legal  substitution, 
asserted  for  the  gospel,  which  in  fact  require  and  look 
for  the  discovery  of  similar  ideas  in  the  analogies  of  the 
ancient  ritual. 

As  to  the  latter,  the  pain  of  dying,  it  is  no  light  and 
trivial  way  of  answer,  to  say  that,  if  the  pain  of  the  ani- 
mal was  any  such  principal  thing,  then  there  was  no 
need  of  any  thing  farther.  To  burn  the  flesh  and  sprin- 
kle the  blood  were  of  no  consequence,  if  the  sacrifice 
was  already  complete.  Offering  the  flesh  in  smoke  was 
nothing,  if  only  the  pain  was  offered ;  for  there  was  no 
pain  in  the  dead  victim.  Even  supposing  the  pain  to 
be  valuable  to  the  worshiper  in  a  way  of  expression, 
the  expression  is  complete,  as  soon  as  the  victim  is  dead. 
What  is  wanted  therefore  is  the  killing  of  the  animal, 
which  requires  no  special  ceremony. 

Furthermore  it  is,  to  say  the  least,  a  very  singular 
thing,  if  so  much  of  the  power  and  significance  of  the 
sacrifices  lies  in  the  death  and  the  dying  pains  of  the 
animals,  that  no  single  worshiper  of  the  old  dispensa- 
tion, ever  has  a  word  to  say  of  these  animal  dyings  and 
pains  of  dying,  drops  no  word  of  sympathy  for  the  vic- 
tims, or  of  sympathetic  relenting  for  sin  on  their  ac- 
count, testifies  no  sorrow,  witnesses  to  no  sense  of  com- 
punction, because  of  the  impressions  made  on  him,  by 
the  hard  fortune  they  are  compelled  to  suffer.  I  recol- 
lect no  single  instance  in  the  whole  Scripture,  where 
the  faintest  intimation  of  this  kind  appears ;  and  yet,  by 

39* 


462  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PAET  IV. 

the  supposition,  impressions  to  be  made  in  this  way  are 
even  a  principal  matter  in  the  sacrifices ! 

Besides,  it  is  also  another  fault  in  all  such  representa- 
tions of  the  mode  of  what  is  called  atonement  by  sacri- 
,      fice.  that  they  suppose  a  tenderness  of 

Had  no  tender  J        I  r 

sympathy  for  the  feeling,  as  regards  the  death  and  suffer- 
ing of  animals,  which  this  people  had  as 
little  of  as  every  pastoral  people  must;  that  is,  very 
nearly  none  at  all.  They  lived,  every  day  of  their 
lives,  on  the  animals  killed  in  the  morning  at  the  tent 
door.  Every  woman,  every  child,  looked  on  at  the 
butchering  and  grew  up  in  the  most  familiar  habit  of 
seeing  life  taken;  nor  was  any  thing  more  common 
than  for  women,  or  even  for  quite  young  children,  to 
kill  and  dress  a  lamb,  or  a  kid,  with  their  own  hands. 
And  yet  their  sacrifice  of  atonement,  it  is  conceived,  is 
going  to  have  its  effect,  by  the  impressions  of  death  and 
dying  pain  it  wakens  in  their  delicate  sensibilities  \ 
The  fictitiousness  of  such  conceptions  is  quite  too 
evident. 

Moreover  it  is  a  great  point  in  the  observance  of 
these  rites  that  the  animal  shall  be  the  first  born  of  its 

The  choice  qual-    dam  5    a  male   ^ithout  spot  Or   blemish. 

ity  of  the  animal  But  why,  on  what  principle,  if  the 
chief  value  of  the  sacrifice  depends  on 
the  death  and  dying  pains  of  the  animal  ?  "Would  not 
any  other,  a  third  born,  a  female,  or  a  lame  or  blem- 
ished animal,  die  as  convulsively  and  suffer  as  much  ? 

It  is  also  a  very  significant  objection  to  these  con- 
structions of  sacrifice,  that,  when  two  goats  are  brought 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  463 

to  the  priest  for  the  people's  offering,  one  is  slain  and 
his  blood  sprinkled  on  the  mercy-seat  and  about  the 
holy  place,  to  remove  the  defilement  Tho  deportation 
supposed  to  be  upon  them,  from  the  of  the  sin  signified 
sins  and  uncleannesses  of  the  people;  yt 
and  then  the  other,  by  which  they  are  to  be  personally 
cleansed  themselves,  suffers  no  death,  or  dying  pain  at 
all,  as  their  substitute,  but  having  their  sins  all  put  upon 
his  head,  by  the  priest's  confession,  is  turned  loose  alive 
and  driven  off  into  the  wilderness — so  to  signify  the 
deportation,  or  clean  removal  of,  their  guiltiness.  It  is 
therefore  called  their  "atonement"  and  is,  in  fact,  an 
offering  just  as  truly  as  the  other  that  was  slain,  only  it 
is  sacrificed  by  expulsion,  and  without  even  so  much  as 
a  thought  of  its  death  or  pain  of  dying. 

Excluding  now  these  unsupported  and  really  forced 
constructions  of  the  sacrifices,  the  question  returns, 
what,  in  positive  reality,  were  they?  Ordained  to  be  a 
wherein  lay  their  use  and  value?  liturgy. 

They  were  appointed,  I  answer,  to  be  the  liturgy  of 
their  religion ;  or,  more  exactly,  of  their  guilt  and  re- 
pentance before  God  as  a  reconciling  God — not  a  verbal 
liturgy,  but  a  transactional,  having  its  power  and  value, 
not  in  any  thing  said,  taught,  reasoned,  but  in  what  is 
done  by  the  worshiper,  and  before  and  for  him,  in  the 
transaction  of  the  rite. 

The  people,  it  must  be  conceived,  have  not  yet  come 
to  the  age  of  reflection.  They  know  nothing  about  piety, 
or  religious  experience,  as  reflectively  defined,  preached, 


464  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

tested,  by  words.  Always  going  out  after  their  eyes 
in  objective  ways  of  action,  and  never  returning  upon 
da  themselves,  they  have  no  reflective  action, 
religion  for  the  no  discovery  of  themselves  by  self-testing 
criticism.  They  are  conscious  of  certain 
single  acts,  which  they  feel  to  be  sins,  but  not  definitely 
conscious  of  sin  as  a  state  of  moral  disorder.  Of  course 
they  are  religious  beings,  guilty  beings,  but  these  deep 
ground-truths  of  their  nature  work  out  in  them,  from  a 
point  back  of  their  distinct  consciousness ;  felt  only  as 
disturbances,  not  discovered  mentally  in  their  philo- 
sophic nature  and  reality.  Now  to  manage  such  a  peo- 
ple and  train  them  towards  himself,  God  puts  them  in  a 
drill  of  action,  works  upon  them  by  a  transactional  lit- 
urgy, and  expects,  by  that  means,  to  generate  in  them 
an  implicit  faith,  sentiment,  piety,  which  they  do  not 
know  themselves  by  definition,  and  could  not  state  in 
words  that  suppose  a  reflective  discovery. 

This  transactional  liturgy,  taken  as  a  divine  institute, 
is  a  contrivance  of  wonderful  skill.  |  Considered  as  in 

Their  fine  adap-    reference   to   t]ie   Capacities  of  the   WOr- 

tation  as  a  transac-  shipers,  and  also  to  results  of  repent- 

tional  liturgy.  ance  for  ^  and  newnegs   of  ^  i{.   dig. 

plays  a  wisdom  really  divine.  It  begins  at  a  point  or 
base  note  of  action,  that,  so  far  as  I  can  recollect,  is  wholly 
unknown  to  the  cultus,  or  the  sacrifices,  of  any  heathen 
religion.  Moving  on  results  of  purity,  or  purification 
from  sin,  it  supposes  impurity,  and  lays  this  down  as  a 
fundamental  figure,  in  what  may  be  called  the  footing 
of  ceremonial  uncleanness.  Then  the  problem  is  to 
cleanse,  or  hallow  the  unclean. 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  465 

There  is  no  definition  of  the  uncleanness;  for  the 
time  of  definition  has  not  come.  Every  thing  stands, 
thus  far,  on  the  basis  of  positive  institu-  Im  lici(.  mean 
tion.  Every  priest  is  unclean,  till  he  is  ing  of  the  unclean 
cleansed ;  every  place,  till  it  is  hallowed.  £ 
On  the  great  day  of  atonement,  every  body  is  unclean, 
and  the  general  mass  of  the  people  go  up  thus  every 
year  to  Jerusalem  in  caravans,  at  the  greatest  incon- 
venience and  with  much  expense,  to  be  cleansed  of  their 
defilement  by  sacrifice.  How  far  they  distinguish  in 
idea  this  moral  kind  of  uncleanness,  from  that  of  their 
legal  appointments,  we  do  not  know.  Perhaps  they  do 
not  very  soon  raise  the  question  of  such  a  distinction. 
This  only  they  know,  that  whoever  touches  a  dead  body 
is  unclean,  and  the  house  in  which  he  dies;  that  the 
leper  is  unclean ;  that  whoever  has  any  suppurative  issue 
is  unclean;  that  whoever  touches,  or  eats  an  unclean 
animal,  is  unclean ;  that  every  vessel,  dress,  oven,  de- 
filed by  such  animals,  makes  unclean  by  the  use.  The 
specification  is  too  long  to  be  completed,  and  I  only  add 
that  every  person  touching  an  unclean  person  is  ipso 
facto  unclean.  Add  also  that,  as  the  unholy  can  not 
approach  unto  God,  so  every  unclean  person  is  shut 
away  from  the  temple,  from  society  and  house  and  ta- 
ble, put  under  quarantine  as  regards  every  body  else, 
and  every  body  else  under  embargo  as  regards  him, 
producing  a  state  of  revulsion  and  of  general  torment 
that  is,  in  the  highest  degree,  uncomfortable. 

Upon  this  now  as  a  basis,  is  erected  the  liturgy  of 
sacrifice  and  blood  as  a  positive  institution.     It  termin- 


466  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

atcs  formally  in  the  result  of  making  clean.     The  argu- 
ment of  it  is — "  For  I  am  the  Lord  your  God ;  ye  shall 
Meaning  also  of   therefore  sanctify  yourselves    and    ye 
the    clean    state  shall  be  holy."     It  says  "do  this,"  "bring 

made  by  sacrifice.      ^  offeringj»  «  sprinkle  this  blood,  and 

you  are  clean."  Perhaps  the  worshiper  will  do  it  only 
in  a  ritual,  half  political  way ;  still  he  will  be  so  far 
clean,  at  any  rate.  But  there  is  a 'chance  that  his  soul 
will  go  on  beyond  the  mere  ritual  effect,  and  allow  a 
deeper  sentiment  to  be  called  into  play.  Perhaps  he 
will  pass  into  a  new  sense  of  cleanness  that  breaks  over 
the  mere  ritual  confines,  and  imports  some  real  begin- 
ning of  a  higher  cleansing  in  his  spiritual  nature.  It 
certainly  will  be  so,  if  he  brings  his  offering  as  a  really 
devout  and  penitent  worshiper. 

So  it  was  with  these  men  of  the  first,  most  unreflec- 

tive  ages,  exercised  in  this  kind  of  worship.     By  and 

by,  as  a  reflective  habit  gets  to  be  a  little 

Conceptions          «  ••  -i    i        i  •     i      n    i  •  i- 

more  and  more  unfolded,  a  kind  of  chiding,  or  rebuke  of 
spiritual  thus  heartlessness  begins  to  be  heard  in  cer- 

inatured.  .  . 

tain  quarters,  as  if  men  could  think  to 
carry  God's  favor  by  bullocks  and  goats  and  blood! 
Still  farther  on,  one,  or  another  will  be  heard  crying 
out  in  the  depth  of  his  guiltiness,  and  quitting  all  sacri- 
fice in  despair  of  it,  "  Create  in  me  a  clean  heart,  0  God, 
and  renew  a  right  spirit  within  me."  Then  the  proph- 
ets will  begin  to  rebuke  the  multitude  of  sacrifices,  as  a 
wretched  imposture  and  offense  to  God,  and  to  proph- 
esy the  complete  ending  of  this  old  covenant  of  forms, 
and  the  establishment  of  God's  new  covenant,  by  the 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  467 

Messiah ;  who  shall  come  to  write  God's  law  in  the 
heart  itself,  and  make  religion  the  completely  spiritual 
affair  openly,  which  it  always  has  been  implicitly. 
Then,  at  last,  Christ  comes,  to  substitute  all  sacrifices, 
and  be  himself  the  sacrifice  offered  once  for  all — in 
what  sense  and  manner  we  shall  see. 

Having  sketched  this  outline  of  the  sacrificial  history, 
in  its  stages  of  progress  and  its  final  culmination,  we 
go  back  now  to  the  simple  first  stage  of  How  the  gacri. 
the  liturgy,  and  look  into  the  scheme  of  fices  get  their 
it,  inquiring  how  it  is  to  get  its  power  ? 
Not  by  the  death  of  the  victim,  we  have  seen ;  there  is 
nothing  said  of  the  death  as  having  any  significance, 
and  there  is  really  not  care  enough  felt  for  it  to  give  it 
any.  Not  by  the  pain  of  the  victim ;  nothing  is  made 
of  that,  and  nothing  is  farther  off  from  the  worshiper's 
thought,  than  to  have  so  much  as  a  serious  feeling 
about  it.  Not  by  the  satisfaction  for  sin,  or  the  satis- 
faction of  God's  justice;  nothing  is  said  either  of  satis- 
faction, or  of  justice,  as  there  could  not  be  when  noth- 
ing is  made  either  of  the  pain,  or  the  dying.  Not  by 
the  substitution  made  of  the  victim,  given  up  to  suffer 
in  the  worshiper's  place ;  for  if  nothing  is  made  of  the 
suffering  of  the  victim,  nothing  could  be  made  of  a  sub- 
stitution of  that  suffering.  A  certain  symbolic  substitu- 
tion, or  substitution  for  significance's  sake,  is  made,  when 
sins  are  confessed  on  the  head  of  the  offering,  and  just 
the  same  is  made  on  the  head  of  the  scape-goat,  even 
more  formally,  when  he  is  driven  off  alive,  to  signify 


468  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IY. 

the  deportation  of  sin ;  where,  of  course,  the  symbolic 
sign  is  all  and  the  goat  nothing — but  simply  a  goat  feed- 
ing elsewhere. 

Excluding  now  these  negatives,  the  question  returns, 
whence  comes  the  liturgic  value  and  power  of  the  sacri- 
fice on  the  feeling  of  the  worshiper?  First  of  all 
there  is  a  certain  expense  and  pains-taking  incurred  by 
him,  in  providing  the  victim  and  in  making  a  journey, 
commonly  toilsome,  and  consuming  many  days'  time  to 
get  his  offering  duly  made.  Secondly,  it  is  another 
matter  which  enters  the  more  deeply  into  his  feeling, 
that  he  chooses  reverently  a  fine,  fair,  first-born  animal, 
that  he  may  give  his  best  to  God  and  that  which  he 
most  values.  Thirdly,  when  he  comes  to  the  altar,  be- 
fore that  mysteriously  veiled,  invisible  recess  where 
Jehovah  dwells,  he  puts  his  hands  on  the  head  of  the 
victim,  or  the  priest  does  it  for  him,  and  confesses  his 
sin ;  going  away  absolved,  as  one  made  clean.  Fourthly, 
it  contributes  immensely  to  the  power  and  impressive- 
ness  of  the  transaction,  that  the  blood  which  figures  so 
largely  in  it,  sprinkled  and  poured  and  touched  upon 
this  and  that  place  to  sanctify  the  altar  and  the  priest, 
has  been  previously  invested  with  an  artificial  sacred- 
ness  for  this  very  purpose.  No  one,  even  from  the  ear- 
liest beginnings  of  sacrifice,  has  been  permitted  to  eat 
blood,  and  Moses  reenacts  the  law,  under  which  he 
makes  it  even  a  capital  offense,  like  blasphemy  or  sacri- 
lege— "  For  the  life  of  the  flesh  is  in  the  blood,  and  I 
have  given  it  to  you  upon  the  altar,  to  make  an  atone- 
ment for  your  souls;  for  it  is  the  blood  that  maketh 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES. 


atonement  for  the  soul."*  Not  that  the  life  thus  offered, 
the  life  made  sacred  and  mysterious  by  such  associa- 
tions gathered  to  it,  carries  effect  by  ceasing  to  live, 
that  is,  by  death  symbolized  in  the  sprinkling  of  it. 
No,  it  gets  its  effect  as  being  life,  the  sacred,  mystic, 
new-creating  touch  of  life ;  for  death  is  uncleanness  it- 
self— no  one  touches  a  dead  body  without  being  made 
unclean — but  the  blood  is  all  purifying ;  "all  things  are 
by  the  law  purged  with  blood." 

Here  then  is  the  grand  terminal  of  all  sacrifice ;  taken 
as  a  liturgy,  it  is  issued  in  a  making  clean ;  it  purges, 
washes,  sprinkles,  purifies,  sanctifies,  The  effect  is  to 
carries  away  pollution,  in  that  sense,  be  lustrai  only, 
absolves  the  guilty.  Calling  it  a  making  of  atonement 
for  this,  or  that  place,  or  person,  it  is  in  the  result  a 
making  clean — "the  priest  shall  make  atonement  for 
her  and  she  shall  be  clean  ;"f  "  make  atonement  for  the 
house  and  it  shall  be  clean  ;"J  "  made  an  atonement  for 
them  to  cleanse  them."§  The  effect  is  to  be  lustrai  sim- 
ply. The  worshiper  may  never  have  thought  reflect- 
ively on  his  inward  defilement,  but  when  so  much  is 
done  by  him  for  the  lustrai  effect,  in  a  manner  so  rever- 
ent, when  he  has  been  touched  by  the  sacred  blood  in 
which  the  mystery  of  life  is  hid,  followed  by  the  for- 
mula that  pronounces  him  clean,  it  will  be  strange  if  his 
transaction al  liturgy  has  not  signified  more  for  the  state 
of  his  inward  man,  than  any  prescribed  trial  and  testing 
in  the  doctrines  of  words  could  have  done,  at  his  stage 

*  Lev.  rvii,  11.        f  Lev-  xii>  8-        \  **v.  xiv,  53. 
§  Numb,  viii,  21. 

40 


470  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

of  culture.  It  is  very  true  that  these  sacrifices  which 
they  offered  year  by  year  continually,  are  declared  by 
an  apostle  "  not  to  make  the  comers  thereunto  perfect." 
But  he  only  means  that  they  do  not  finish  out,  or  bring 
his  want  of  grace  to  an  end ;  not  that  they  result  in  no 
genuine  fruits  of  character.  So  when  he  declares  that 
"it  is  not  possible  that  the  blood  of  bulls  and  of  goats 
should  take  away  sins,"  he  does  not  mean  that  no  one 
finds  a  true  remission  in  his  offering,  but  only  that  he 
wants  another  still,  and  still  another,  while  Christ  is  of- 
fered, once  for  all,  and  makes  a  complete  finality  of 
sacrifice. 

In  what  sense  a  sacrifice  ? — this  now  is  the  principal 
question  whose  answer  we  seek,  and  are  ready  to  give. 

In  what  sense    ^-ere)  °^  course7    a^    tne    exclusions  just 

Christ  is  a  sacri-  made  are  to  be  repeated — his  pains  have 
no  value  as  pains,  or  his  dying  as  death ; 
he  does  not  satisfy  God's  justice ;  he  is  not  legally  sub- 
stituted in  our  place.  There  was  nothing  of  this  nature 
in  the  sacrifices  and,  when  he  becomes  a  sacrifice  for 
sin,  there  should  not  be  in  his. 

A  good  proximate  and  general  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion, in  what  sense  a  sacrifice?  is  this:  that  he  ful- 
Not  a  literal  sac-  filled  the  analogy  of  the  ancient  sacri- 

rifice  but  more.  £ce .  serving  like  uses,  only  in  a  higher 
key,  and  in  a  more  perfect  manner,  with  a  more  com- 
plete lustral  effect.  It  has  been  a  question,  much  dis- 
cussed, whether  Christ  is  a  literal,  or  figurative  sacri- 
fice, and  the  latter  conception  has  been  repelled,  with 


CHAP.  1.        AND    THE    LUSTEAL    FIGURES.  471 

much  feeling,  partly  because  it  has  been  advocated  in  a 
way  of  escaping  the  fact  of  any  sacrifice  at  all,  and 
partly  because  both  parties  fail  to  see  any  very  serious 
meaning  left,  when  the  figurative  sense  is  admitted. 
On  one  side  he  is  just  a  figure  sacrifice,  nothing  more. 
On  the  other,  being  reduced  to  this,  he  is  just  a  phan- 
tom sacrifice,  and  that  is  nothing  at  all.  It  is  not  per- 
ceived that,  when  a  word  rises  out  of  fact  in  the  physi- 
cal range,  to  be  the  fixed  name,  by  figure,  of  something 
in  the  range  of  thought  and  spirit,  it  obtains  a  meaning 
as  much  fuller  and  more  solid  as  it  is  closer  akin  to 
mind.  Is  good  taste  nothing  because  it  is  not  the  lit- 
eral tasting  faculty  of  the  mouth?  Is  a  good  heart 
nothing  because  it  is  not  the  pumping  organ  of  the 
body,  but  only  a  figure  derived  from  it?  Is  rectitude 
nothing  because  it  is  only  a  figurative  straightness,  and 
not  a  literal  straight  line?  Is  integrity  nothing  because 
it  is  only  a  moral  wholeness  and  not  the  veritable  inte1 
ger  of  arithmetic?  How  visibly  does  the  figure,  as  fig- 
ure, rise  to  a  nobler  and  more  real  meaning,  in  all  such 
examples ;  and  when  we  find  that  human  language  is 
underlaid  all  through,  in  this  manner,  with  physical 
images,  observing  their  wondrous  fitness  to  serve  as  a 
wording  for  all  that  mind  can  think,  or  wish  to  express, 
we  are  half  disposed  to  believe  that  they  were  made  and 
set  into  nature  for  this  purpose.  They  become  even 
more  real  as  figures  than  they  are  as  facts,  and  there  is 
no  so  great  victory  for  any  truth,  or  subject  of  intelli- 
gence, as  when  it  has  obtained  some  fit  analogon,  or 
"  figure  of  the  true,"  to  be  its  interpreter. 


472  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

Here,  accordingly,  it  was  that  God  displayed  his  skill, 
in  adjusting  the  forms  of  the  altar,  and  all  the  solemn 

A  nomenclature   externalities  of  the  ritual  service.     They 

for  the  gospel.  were  not  on]y  ^o  be  a  liturgy  for  the 
time  then  present,  but  they  were  to  prepare  new  bases 
of  words  not  existing  in  nature,  and  so  a  new  nomencla- 
ture of  figures  for  the  sacrifice  of  his  Son.  And  it  took 
even  many  centuries  to  get  the  figures  ready,  clothed 
with  fit  associations,  wrought  into  fit  impressions,  worn 
into  use  and  finally  almost  into  disuse,  by  the  weary, 
unsatisfied  feeling  that  is  half  ready  and  longing  for 
something  beyond  them — all  this  it  required,  to  get  a 
language  made  that  was  at  all  competent  to  express  the 
perfectly  transcendental,  supernatural,  otherwise  never 
imagined  or  conceived  fact  of  divine  suffering  and  vi- 
carious sacrifice  in  God.  Now  the  central  figure,  in  this 
new  language  for  the  cross,  is  sacrifice ;  a  word  as  much 
more  significant  when  applied  to  Christ,  than  when  ap- 
plied to  the  altar  ceremony,  as  the  Lamb  of  God  signi- 
fies more  than  a  lamb.  Other  words  and  images  come 
along  in  the  same  train,  which  also  belong  to  the  altar 
and  the  old  transactional  liturgy  of  the  temple,  and 
Christ  emerges  on  the  world  through  them  all,  as  by  a 
kind  of  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  himself  the  full  discov- 
ered love  and  vicariously  burdened  sorrow — the  cross 
that  was  hid  in  God's  nature  even  from  eternal  ages. 
In  this  view  he  does  not  begin  to  be  the  real  and  true 
sacrifice,  till  he  goes  above  all  the  literalities  of  sacrifice, 
and  becomes  the  fulfillment  of  their  meaning  as  figures. 

However  this  may  be,  it  is  sufficiently  plain  that  he 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  473 

can  be  a  sacrifice,  only  under  conditions  of  analogy  and 
figurative  correspondence,  and  I  am  quite  certain  that 
he  was  never  conceived,  by  any  one,  to  A  8acrifico  under 
be  a  literal  sacrifice,  who  had  not  some-  conditions  of  anal- 
how  confounded  the  distinction  between  ogy' 
a  real  and  a  literal  sacrifice.  He  is  a  sacrifice  in  much 
the  same  sense  as  he  is  a  Lamb.  He  is  not  offered  upon 
any  altar,  not  slain  by  a  priest,  not  burned  with  fire. 
He  is  not  offered  under  and  by  the  law ;  but  against 
even  the  decalogue  itself — by  false  witness  and  murder. 
He  dies  on  a  gibbet,  and  the  priests  have  no  part  in  the 
transaction, -save  as  conspirators  and  leaders  of  the  mob. 
There  is  no  absolution,  but  a  challenge  of  defiance 
rather — "his  blood  be  on  us  and  on  our  children." 

In  this  exposition  a  certain  discoverable  analogy  is 
supposed,  between  what  was  done,  or  suffered  by  Christ, 
and  the  offering  of  victims  at  the  altar. 

JSo  external  cor- 

But  there  is  no  shadow  of  resemblance  respondence  in  the 
in  the  external  facts  of  Christ's  death,   analo*y>  unless  in 

the  sacred  blood. 

unless  it  be  in  some  slight  finger-marks 
of  correspondence,  such  as  the  evangelist  notes,  when 
he  says,  "that  the  Scripture  should  be  fulfilled — A 
bone  of  him  shall  not  be  broken."  And  yet  there  is 
such  a  deep-set,  grandly  real,  and  wide-reaching  corres- 
pondence, that  no  man,  fresh  in  the  sentiments  of  the 
altar,  could  well  miss  of  it,  or  fail  to  be  strangely  im- 
pressed by  it.  Here  is  the  first-born,  the  unblemished 
beauty,  the  chaste  Lamb  of  God — never  came  to  mortal 
eyes  any  such  perfect  one  before.  And  the  expense  he 
makes,  under  his  great  love-struggle  and  heavy  burden 

40* 


474  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IY. 

of  feeling,  his  Gethsemane  where  the  burden  presses 
him  down  into  agony,  his  Calvary,  where,  in  his  unpro- 
testing  and  lamb-like  submission,  he  allows  himself  to 
be  immolated  by  the  world's  wrath — what  will  any  one, 
seeing  all  this,  so  naturally  or  inevitably  call  it,  as 
his  sacrifice  for  the  sins  of  the  world.  His  blood  too, 
the  blood  of  the  incarnate  Son  of  God,  blood  of  the  up- 
per world  half  as  truly  as  of  this — when  it  touches  and 
stains  the  defiled  earth  of  the  planet,  what  so  sacred 
blood  on  the  horns  of  the  altar  and  the  lid  of  the  mercy- 
seat,  did  any  devoutest  worshiper  at  the  altar  ever  see 
sprinkled  for  his  cleansing !  There  his  sin  he  hoped 
could  be  dissolved  away,  and  it  comforted  his  conscience 
that,  by  the  offering  of  something  sacred  as  blood,  he 
could  fitly  own  his  defilement,  and  by  such  tender  ar- 
gument win  the  needed  cleansing.  But  the  blood  of 
Christ,  he  that  was  born  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  he  that  was 
Immanuel — when  this  sprinkles  Calvary,  it  is  to  him  as 
if  some  touch  of  cleansing  were  in  it  for  the  matter  it- 
self of  the  world!  In  short,  there  is  so  much  in  this 
analogy,  and  it  is  so  affecting,  so  profoundly  real,  that 
no  worshiper  most  devout,  before  the  altar,  having 
once  seen  Christ — who  he  is,  what  he  has  done  by  his 
cross,  and  the  glorious  offering  he  has  made  of  himself 
in  his  ministry  of  good,  faithful  unto  death — who  will 
not  turn  away  instinctively  to  him,  saying,  "no  more 
altars,  goats,  or  lambs ;  these  were  shadows  I  see ;  now 
has  come  the  substance.  This  is  my  sacrifice  and  here 
is  my  peace — the  blood  that  was  shed  for  the  remission 
of  sins — this  I  take  and  want  no  other." 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  475 

And  so  it  comes  to  pass  that  Christ  is  continually  set 
forth  in  the  gospels  and  epistles  of  the  New  Testament, 
in  the  terms  of  sacrifice,  because  there  is 

Christ  called  a 

so  great  power  m  it  for  the  soul ;  also  in   sncrifice  because 

the  fact,  otherwise  never  conceived  or  of    his    lustral 

i  p°wcr- 

brought  down  to  mortal  experience,  that 

God's  eternal  character  has  a  cross  in  it,  a  sorrowing, 
heavily  burdened  mercy  for  his  enemies,  a  winning  and 
transforming  power,  which  it  is  even  their  new-creation 
to  feel.  I  can  not  go  over  all  the  sacrificial  terms  and 
expressions  of  the  New  Testament,  or  even  the  very 
deliberate  exposition  of  whole  chapters  in  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews,  where  the  correspondence,  or  analogy, 
between  Christ  and  the  ancient  sacrifices,  is  carefully 
traced.  I  will  only  say,  in  general,  that  a  very  import- 
ant oversight,  in  respect  to  all  the  altar  phrases  of  the 
gospel,  needs  to  be  corrected.  They  are  cited  to  prove 
atonement  in  the  sense  of  satisfaction,  or  of  an  offering 
made  to  reconcile  God.  Hence  there  is  nothing  made 
of  the  lustral  figures,  that  almost  always  go  along  with 
them ;  which,  if  they  had  any  meaning  given  them, 
would  conduct  the  mind  straight  in  upon  the  conclu- 
sion, that  Christ  is  offered,  not  to  satisfy  God,  but  to 
take  away  sin,  to  cleanse,  purify,  make  alive  and  holy, 
the  moral  state  of  sinners. 

Sometimes  and  not  seldom  the  lustral  figures  them- 
selves, the  very  object  of  which,  under  the  old  ritual, 
was    to  conduct    the   worshiper's   mind      Abuses  of  the 
into  a  fit  conception  of  the  result  prepar-   Scripture  texts. 
ing  in  his  sacrifice,  are  taken  just  as  if  they  only  meant, 


476  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IY. 

by  the  cleansing  they  speak  of  in  a  New  Testament  use, 
that  God  is  so  far  reconciled  by  due  satisfaction,  that  he 
may  pass  transgressors  now  as  being  clean,  when  they 
are  not.  They  are  sprinkled,  washed,  purged,  purified, 
cleansed,  in  the  sense  that  for  Christ's  sake  they  are  ad- 
mitted to  be  so,  when  they  are  not !  And  so  the  proof 
texts  of  satisfaction  are  multiplied  with  great  facility. 
Let  any  one  gather  up  all  the  allusions  made  in  the  New 
Testament  to  the  altar  sacrifices,  noting  carefully  those 
which  look  towards  a  lustral  and  transforming  effect  on 
men,  as  distinguished  from  those  which  clearly  and 
positively  refer  to  an  effect  on  God,  and  he  will  be  as- 
tonished to  find  how  the  doctrine  of  judicial  satisfaction 
has  engulfed,  as  by  a  maelstrom  sweep,  every  most  un* 
willing  thing  that  has  come  in  its  way.  Probably  nine- 
tenths  at  least  of  the  proof  texts  of  the  New  Testament, 
under  figures  taken  from  the  altar,  make  the  sacrifice 
of  Christ  a  plainly  lustral  offering  in  its  effect,  while  the 
other  tenth  as  plainly  stop  short  of  any  reconciling 
effect  on  God.  And  yet  they  have  so  long  been  read 
in  •  a  different  way,  that  we  are  scarcely  aware  of  the 
forced  meaning  put  upon  them.  Such  a  fact  can  not 
be  verified,  without  going  into  a  general  canvass  of  the 
texts,  which  is  here  impossible.  I  can  only  call  atten- 
tion to  the  fact,  adding  as  examples  just  a  few  of  the 
principal  texts,  which  it  will  be  seen,  without  a  word 
of  comment,  bear  the  lustral  meaning,  or  the  expecta- 
tion of  a  cleansing,  sin-removing,  life-giving,  effect,  on 
their  faces. 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  477 

Behold  the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  away  the  sin  of 
the  world.* 

In  this  was  manifested  the  love  of  God  toward  us, 
because  that  God  sent  his  only  begotten  Son  into  the 
world  that  we  might  live  through  him.f 

The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ  his  Son  cleanseth  us  from 
all  sin.J 

Who  his  own  self  bare  our  sins,  in  his  own  body  on 
the  tree,  that  we,  being  dead  to  sin,  should  live  unto 
righteousness ;  by  whose  stripes  ye  are  healed.§ 

How  much  more  shall  the  blood  of  Christ,  who, 
through  the  eternal  Spirit,  offered  himself,  without  spot, 
to  God,  purge  your  conscience  from  dead  works  to 
serve  the  living  God.  I 

Having  therefore,  brethren,  boldness  to  enter  into  the 
holiest  by  the  blood  of  Jesus,  *  *  *  Let  us  draw 
near,  with  a  true  heart,  in  full  assurance  of  faith,  hav- 
ing our  hearts  sprinkled  from  an  evil  conscience,  and 
our  bodies  washed  with  pure  water.  T 

And  having  made  peace,  through  the  blood  of  his 
cross,  by  him  to  reconcile  all  things  unto  himself;  by 
him  I  say,  whether  they  be  things  in  earth,  or  things 
in  heaven.  And  you  that  were  sometime  alienated  and 
enemies  in  your  minds  by  wicked  works,  yet  now  hath 
he  reconciled,  in  the  body  of  his  flesh  through  death, 
to  present  you  holy,  unblamable,  and  unreprovable  in 
his  sight.** 

*  John  i,  29.  f  l  John  iv>  9-10-  t  l  John  *•  *• 

§  Peter  ii,  24.        |  Heb.  be,  14.        f  Heb.  x,  19-21. 

**  Col.  i,  20-2. 


478  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

Unto  him  that  loved  us  and  washed  us  from  our  sins 
in  his  own  blood.* 

The  charlatanism  of  interpretation — it  is  really  one 
of  the  saddest  chapters  of  our  Christian  history !  And 
what  a  revelation  of  it  have  these  poor  texts  to  give, 
when  released  from  their  long  captivity,  and  allowed  to 
simply  speak  for  themselves ! — testifying,  all,  with  glad 
consent,  that  Christ  is  our  sacrifice,  for  the  taking  away 
of  our  sin,  our  quickening  unto  life,  our  cleansing  and 
spiritual  reconciliation  with  God. 

There  is  still  another  class  of  figures  generated  casu- 
ally, outside  of  the  ritual;  partly  judicial,  partly  politi- 
cal and  historical,  partly  commercial,  and  partly  natu- 
ral. The  footing  already  gained  by  what  we  have 
shown  respecting  the  divinely  contrived  symbols  of  the 
altar,  makes  it  unnecessary  to  devote  a  distinct  chapter 
to  their  consideration.  It  will  be  sufficient  to  give 
them  a  brief  supplementary  notice  here. 

The  first  class,  the  judicial,  or  seemingly  judicial,  ap- 
pears abundantly  in  the  fifty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah — 

The  judicial  "stricken,  smitten  of  God  and  afflicted;" 
figures.  "wounded  for  our  transgressions;" 
"bruised  for  our  iniquities;"  "the  chastisement  of  our 
peace  was  upon  him;"  "by  his  stripes  we  are  healed;" 
"  for  the  transgression  of  my  people  was  he  stricken ;" 
"  it  pleased  the  Lord  to  bruise  him."  These  are  all  fig- 
ures that  refer,  more  or  less  clearly,  to  judicial  and  pe- 
nal processes ;  as  if  Christ,  the  subject,  were  somehow 

*  Rev.  i,  5. 


CHAP.  I.        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  479 

punitively  handled  in  our  place.  But  the  whole  chap- 
ter, it  will  be  observed,  is  from  the  point  of  gratitude, 
or  holy  ascription,  after  the  offering  is  made.  It  is  the 
witness  of  a  tender  confession,  not  a  prophesy,  save  in 
that  form.  And  what  is  more  natural  than  for  a  soul 
delivered  of  its  curse,  its  retributive  woes,  its  penal 
bondage,  and  heaving  in  great  sentiments  of  praise  and 
holy  ascription  to  its  deliverer,  to  represent  him,  in  his 
suffering  goodness,  as  having  taken  upon  himself  the 
very  pains  and  dues  of  justice  he  has  removed?  "Did 
he  not  bear  my  punishment  ?  did  he  not  bleed  under 
my  stripes  ?  was  not  my  chastisement  upon  him  ?  was 
he  not  smitten  of  God  in  judgments  that  were  falling  on 
me  ?"  And  yet  every  one  who  makes  this  confession 
will  know  that  he  means  this  only  as  in  figure,  to  ex- 
press his  tender  acknowledgment,  and  nothing  will  be 
farther  off  from  his  thought  than  to  imagine  that  he  was 
literally  asserting  the  punishment  of  his  deliverer.* 

Besides  we  have,  here  and  there,  a  mark  put  in,  which 
indicates  moral  effect,  and  turns  the  meaning  quite  away 
from  the  understanding  of  a  literal  punishment ;  as  for 
example  in  the  "  peace  "  that  follows  chastisement,  and 
the  healing  that  follows  the  stripes — "  with  his  stripes 
we  are  healed."  Furthermore,  it  would  be  a  plain 
abuse  of  Scripture  to  set  one  class  of  figures,  in  regard 
to  a  given  subject,  clashing  with  another ;  and  still  more 
to  set  the  mere  chance  symbols  of  a  subject  directly 
against  the  deliberately  contrived  symbols  prepared  for 
it.  If,  then,  we  find  the  altar  symbols  looking  system- 

*  Illustrated  more  fully  pp.  396-7,  Part  III.,  Chap.  VI. 


480  SACRIFICE    AND    BLOOD  PART  IV. 

atically,  all  as  one,  towards  results  of  moral  effect, 
these  casual  symbols  and  all  others  of  the  same  general 
nature  ought  surely  not  to  be  taken  as  looking  towards 
an  effect  purely  judicial  and  penal. 

And  there  is  still  less  reason  for  this,  in  the  fact  that 
Christ,  doing  all  for  moral  effect,  did  actually  bear,  as 
we  have  fully  shown,  the  corporate  curse  and  penal  dis- 
order of  the  world,  in  a  way  of  renewing  it ;  a  fact  in 
which  all  such  judicial  figures  are  sufficiently  met, 
though  the  curse  was  in  no  sense  penal  as  against  him. 

The  political  and  historical  figures  are  such  as  grew 

out  of  the  release  of  captives  taken  in  war.     Thus  we 

Political  and  Hs-  have  "redemption,"  as  a  figure  derived 

tone  figures,  from  the  buying  back  of  captives ;  and 
"ransom,"  as  the  sum  advanced  for  that  object.  Thus 
Christ,  in  offering  himself  for  our  deliverance,  became 
our  redemption,  gave  himself  a  ransom  for  us,  or  more 
briefly  gave  himself  for  us.  Where,  of  course,  the  main 
idea  signified,  is  our  moral  and  spiritual  emancipation 
from  the  bondage  of  evil ;  a  result  in  the  nature  of 
moral  effect,  wholly  coincident  with  the  lustral  figures 
of  the  ritual. 

The  commercial  figures  are  to  the  same  effect — 
"bought  with  a  price;"  " purchased  with  his  blood;" 
The  commercial  "  forgive  us  our  debts."  Whole  theo- 
figures.  rieg  o£  atonement  have  been  based  on 
eacn  of  these  analogies,  and  all  the  other  symbols  of  the 
New  Testament  have  been  compelled,  how  often,  to 
submit  themselves  to  the  regulative  force  of  these  anal- 
ogies, taken  virtually  as  the  literalities  of  the  question. 


CHAP.  L        AND    THE    LUSTRAL    FIGURES.  481 

A  much  truer  and  freer  meaning  would  be  assigned 
with  as  much  greater  dignity,  and  requires  not  even  to 
be  stated. 

The  natural  figures  are  such  as  death  and  life,  "  rec- 
onciled by  the  death;"  "saved  by  his  life;"  "tasted 
death  for  every  man;"  "Christ  who  is  The  natural]y 
our  life."  In  all  these  figures,  which  are  significant  fig- 
multiplied  in  a  hundred  shapes,  and  set  ures* 
in  a  hundred  diverse  combinations,  moral  effect  is  the 
always  present  and,  in  fact,  only  constant  matter 
intended. 

I  will  not  pursue  this  exposition  farther ;  for  the  rea- 
son that  there  is  plainly  no  necessity  for 'it.  The  gen- 
eral conclusion  is,  that  all  the  Scripture  symbols  coin- 
cide, as  nearly  as  may  be,  in  the  one  ruling  conception, 
that  Christ  is  here  in  the  world  to  be  a  power  on  char- 
acter— to  cleanse,  to  wash,  to  purify,  to  regenerate,  new- 
create,  make  free,  invest  in  the  righteousness  of  God,  the 
guilty  souls  of  mankind.  Beyond  that  nothing  plainly 
is  wanted,  and  therefore  there  is  nothing  to  be  found. 

41 


CHAPTER  II. 

ATONEMENT,    PKOPITIATION,   AND   EXPIATION. 

IN  the  previous  chapter,  a  careful  investigation  was 
made  of  the  use  or  purpose  of  the  ancient  sacrifices 
and  rites  of  blood,  and  the  endeavor  was,  to  find  by 
what  means,  or  in  what  sense,  Christ  is  called  a  sacri- 
fice, and  is  represented  as  accomplishing  so  much  by 
his  blood.  In  this  investigation  I  passed  over  certain 
much  disputed  points  in  the  institution  and  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of  sacrifice,  that,  in  settling  first  the  more 
positive  questions  of  practical  use  and  meaning,  we 
might  not  be  distracted,  or  confused,  by  multiplicities 
too  numerous  to  allow  the  distinct  settlement  of  any 
thing.  We  come  now  to  the  much  debated  and  diffi- 
cult questions  that  range  under  the  words  atonement,  ex- 
piation, propitiation.  These  are  words  pertaining  secon- 
darily to  sacrifice,  or  to  the  effects  of  sacrifice,  and  are 
commonly  set  in  such  prominence,  as  to  be  words  of 
principal  figure,  not  only  in  the  doctrine,  but  also  in 
the  preaching  of  the  cross.  Our  investigation  there- 
fore of  sacrifices  and  the  Christian  sacrifice  will  not  be 
complete,  or  satisfactory,  till  these  ruling  words  and 
ideas  are  ventilated  by  a  careful  discussion. 


CHAP.  IL  ATONEMENT,    ETC.  483 

As  regards  the  words  themselves,  it  may  be  well  to 
note,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  English  word  atonement 
is  entirely  an  Old  Testament  word,  not 

Two  ruling  con- 

occurrmg  at  all  in  the  translation  of  the  Ceptions.  Atone- 
New,  except  in  a  single  instance  ;*  ment  and  P">pto- 
where  it  is  given  as  the  translation  of  a 
word  that  is  twice  translated  reconciliation,  in  the  previ- 
ous verse,  and  in  every  other  place  in  the  New  Testament 
is  translated  reconciliation.  And  yet  the  deviation  in 
this  particular  instance  is  less  remarkable,  because  the 
English  word  atonement,  at  the  time  when  the  Scriptures 
were  translated,  meant  to  reconcile,  that  is,  to  at-one. 
And  it  is  in  this  sense  of  making  reconcilement,  putting- 
at-one,  that  the  word  is  so  often  used  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. There,  however,  it  is  not  so  much  the  literal 
translation  or  transfer  of  the  Hebrew  word  in  its  own 
type,  as  a  new,  though  very  good  and  proper  construc- 
tion, put  in  its  place.  The  Hebrew  word  is  cover,  the 
very  same  root  from  which  our  English  word  cover  is 
derived.  Thus  where  we  read  so  often,  "  he  shall  make 
atonement  for  you,"  "  scape-goat  to  make  atonement,'* 
and  the  like,  it  means  the  same  thing  as  to  make  sin- 
cover,  that  is,  reconciliation ;  the  conception  being,  that 
sin  is  thereby  covered  up,  hidden  from  sight  or  mem- 
ory. Exactly  the  same  thing  is  meant,  when,  using  a 
different  figure,  it  is  said  to  be  purged,  cleansed,  taken 
away.  When  the  transgressor  is  said  to  be  atoned  or 
reconciled,  the  being  covered  is  taken  subjectively  in  the 
same  way ;  as  if  something  had  come  upon  him  to 

*  Romans  v,  11. 


484  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IV. 

change  his  unclean  state,  and  make  him  ceremonially, 
or,  it  may  be,  spiritually,  pure. 

But  the  subject  thus  atoned  is  not  only  covered  or 
cleansed  in  himself,  but  he  is  figured  as  being  put  in  a 
new  relation  with  God,  and  God  with  him  ;  and  it  is  as 
if  God  were  somehow  changed  towards  him — newly  in- 
clined, mitigated,  propitiated  or  made  propitious.  It 
resulted  accordingly,  that  the  Hebrew  word  to  cover  was 
very  frequently  translated  in  the  Greek  Septuagint,  by 
a  word  that  signifies  to  propitiate  or  make  propitiation. 
And  the  same  word  occurs,  in  six  instances  in  the  New 
Testament,  and  under  three  grammatic  forms ;  where  it 
is  translated,  three  times,  "  propitiation ;"  once,  "  to 
make  reconciliation;"  once,  " be  merciful ;"  and  once, 
"  mercy -seat ;"  the  three  latter  examples  having,  of 
course,  their  fair  equivalents,  in  the  phrases,  "  make  pro- 
pitiation," "be  propitious,"  and  "seat  of  propitiation." 

We  have  then,  two  ruling  conceptions  of  sacrifice, 
connected  with,  or  resulting  from,  the  figure  of  a  sin 

Both  concep-  cover  ?  one  representing  the  effect  in  us, 
tions  miscoiored  and  the  other  an  effect  in  God  as  re- 
on'  lated  to  us — reconciliation  [at-one-ment,] 
and  propitiation.  I  shall  recur  to  them  again,  at  the 
close  of  the  chapter,  to  settle  more  exactly  their  rela- 
tive import,  when  applied  to  the  Christian  sacrifice. 
Meantime,  another  very  weighty  matter  demands  our 
careful  attention  ;  viz.,  the  question  of  expiation. 

Both  these  terms,  atonement  and  propitiation,  are 
turned  from  their  true  meaning,  in  our  common  uses, 
by  the  false  idea  of  expiation  associated  with  them,  or 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  485 

entered  theologically  into  them.  To  atone  is  no  more 
to  reconcile,  that  is  to  restore  and  make  clean,  but  it  is 
made  to  mean  the  answering  for  sin,  making  amends 
for  it,  by  offering  expiatory  pains  to  obtain  the  dis- 
charge of  it.  Propitiation  is  made  in  the  same  way,  to 
signify  the  placation  of  God,  by  a  contribution  of  pains 
and  expiatory  sufferings.  We  can  not  therefore  recover 
the  two  words,  atonement  and  propitiation,  to  their  true 
meaning,  without  going  into  a  deliberate  and  careful  in- 
vestigation of  the  false  element  by  which  they  are  cor- 
rupted. 

The  word  expiation  does  not  once  occur  in  the  Scrip- 
ture. The  idea  is  classical,  not  scriptural  at  all,  but 
the  word  has  been  sliding  into  use  by  the 

Expiation   not 

Christian  disciples  and  teachers,  and  get-  a  W0rd  of  the 
ting  itself  accepted  interchangeably  for  Scriptures  but  of 

J  the  classics. 

such  as  belong  to  the  Scripture,  till  it  has 
come  to  be  even  a  considerable  test  of  orthodoxy.  I 
do  not  object  to  it,  however,  because  of  its  origin,  but 
because  of  its  incurable  falsity.  A  new  word  applied 
to  Christian  subjects  is  not,  of  course,  to  be  condemned, 
because  it  is  new.  Neither  is  a  pagan  word  to  be  al- 
ways cast  out.  But  a  word  both  new  and  pagan,  made 
staple  as  in  application  to  an  old,  divinely  ordered,  sta- 
ple institution  of  Scripture,  like  that  of  sacrifice,  must 
be  admitted,  I  think,  to  wear  a  suspicious  look.  It 
should  certainly  have  been  carefully  questioned,  before 
it  was  baptized  into  the  faith,  as  I  very  much  fear  it 
was  not 

41* 


486  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IV. 

But  the  baptism  is  passed  and  we  have  the  word  up- 
on us.  The  only  matter  left  us  for  inquiry  therefore, 
relates  to  ideas  themselves,  and  I  propose,  that  I  may 
cover  the  whole  ground  of  the  subject,  three  questions, — 

I.  What  is  expiation  ? 

II.  Is  it  credible  as  a  fact  under  the  divine  govern- 
ment? 

III.  Is  there  any  such  thing  as  expiation  supposed 
in  the  Scripture  sacrifices  ? 

I.  What  is  expiation?     It  does  not,  I  answer,  sim- 
ply signify  the  fact  that  God  is  propitiated,  but  it  brings 
in  the  pagan,  or  Latin  idea  (for  it  is  a 

Expiation   is  an.  TV,  •>  •/>  ^        i 

evil  given  to  buy  -Latin  word,)  that  the  sacrifice  offered 
the  release  of  an  softens  God,  or  assuages  the  anger  of 
God,  as  being  an  evil,  or  pain,  contribu- 
ted to  his  offended  feeling.  That  Christ  has  fulfilled  a 
mission  of  sacrifice,  and  become  a  reconciling  power 
on  human  character,  has  been  abundantly  shown. 
And  this  change  thus  wrought  in  men,  we  shall  also 
see,  is  the  condition  of  a  different  relationship  on  the 
part  of  God.  But  an  expiatory  sacrifice  proposes  a  set- 
tlement with  God  on  a  different  footing ;  viz.,  that  God 
is  to  be  propitiated,  or  gained  over  to  a  new  relation- 
ship, by  very  different  means.  The  distinctive  idea  of 
expiation  is  that  God  is  to  have  an  evil  given  him  by 
consent,  for  an  evil  due  by  retribution.  It  throws  in 
before  God  or  the  gods  some  deprecatory  evil,  in  the 
expectation  that  the  wrath  may  be  softened  or  averted 
by  it.  The  power  of  the  expiation  depends  not  on  the 


CHAP.  IL  AND    EXPIATION.  487 

sentiments,  or  repentances,  or  pious  intentions  connect- 
ed with  it,  but  entirely  on  the  voluntary  damage  incur- 
red in  it.  According  to  the  Latin  idea,  "  Diis  violatis 
expiatio  debetur" — when  the  gods  are  wronged,  expia- 
tion is  their  due — and  the  understanding  is  that,  when 
the  wrong  doers  fall  to  punishing  themselves  in  great 
losses,  it  mitigates  the  wrath  of  the  gods  and  turns 
them  to  the  side  of  favor. 

Now  it  is  in  this  particular  idea  of  expiation,  the 
giving  an  evil  to  the  gods,  to  obtain  a  release  for  other 
evils  apprehended  or  actually  felt,  that  A  pagan  corrup. 
the  sacrifices  of  all  the  heathen  nations  tion  of  the  Jewish 
were  radically  distinguished  from  the 
Jewish  or  Scripture  sacrifices.  And  the  pagan  relig- 
ions were  corruptions  plainly  enough,  in  this  view,  of 
the  original,  ante-Mosaic,  ante-Jewish  cultus — supersti- 
tions of  degenerate  brood,  such  as  guilt,  and  fear,  and 
the  spurious  motherhood  of  ignorance,  have  it  for  their 
law  to  propagate.  As  repentance  settles  into  penance 
under  this  regimen  of  superstition,  so  the  sacrifices  set- 
tled into  expiations  under  the  same.  And  the  process 
only  went  a  little  farther,  when  they  fell,  as  they  did 
the  pagan  world  over,  into  the  practice  of  human  sacri- 
fices ;  for  since  the  gods  were  to  be  gained  by  expiato- 
ry evils,  the  greater  the  evil  the  more  sure  the  favor ; 
and  therefore  they  sometimes  offered  their  captives, 
sometimes  their  sons  and  daughters,  sometimes  their 
kings'  sons,  and  sometimes  even  their  kings  and  queens 
themselves ;  believing  that  in  no  other  manner  could 
they  sufficiently  placate  their  envious  and  bloody  deities. 


488  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IV. 

Expiation  figured  in  this  manner,  not  as  a  merely  casual 
and  occasional  part  of  religion,  but  as  being  very  nearly 
the  same  thing  as  religion  itself.  For  as  even  Tacitus 
could  say,  that  "  the  gods  interfere  in  human  concerns, 
but  to  punish,"  what  could  they  think  of  doing,  in  re- 
ligion, but  to  expiate  ?  The  classic  and  all  pagan  sen- 
timents of  worship,  being  thus  corrupted  by  the  false 
element  or  infusion  of  expiation,  the  later  Jewish  com- 
mentators and  Christian  theologians  finally  took  up  the 
conception,  laying  claim  to  it  as  a  worthy  and  genuine 
property  in  all  sacrifices,  whether  those  of  the  law,  or 
even  the  great  sacrifice  of  the  gospel  itself.  And  now 
there  is  nothing  more  devoutly  asserted,  or  more  rever- 
ently believed,  than  our  essential  need  of  an  expiatory 
sacrifice,  and  the  fact  that  such  a  sacrifice  is  made  for 
our  'salvation,  in  the  cross  of  Jesus  Christ. 

It  is  a  matter  of  justice  I  gladly  admit,  and,  for  the 
honor  of  the  gospel,  I  should  even  like  to  make  the 

v    .  ..         .   concession  broader  still,  that  the  advo- 

j^xpiation   not 

so  defined,  yet  so  /cates  of  Christian  expiation  do  not  define 

understood.  /  d() 


not  seem  to  have  drawn  their  thoughts  to  any  point 
;  close  enough  to  yield  a  definition,  but  only  understand, 


in  general,  that  when  they  speak  of  expiation,  they 
*   •       j  |  mean  a  bloody  sacrifice.     And  yet  they  do  mean,  if  we 
if  i  take  their  whole  mental  content,  something  more  ;  viz., 
just  what  I  have  described.     How  we  commonly  use 
*ke  term  *n  ot^er  matters  than  religion,  may  be  seen, 
for  example,  when  we  say  of  a  murderer  who  has  been 
executed,  that  he  has  expiated  his  crime  ;  or  of  any 


CHAP.  IL  AND    EXPIATION.  489 

one  who  has  done  a  dishonorable  deed,  that  the  shame 
in  which  he  lives,  is  the  bitter  expiation  of  his  fault. 
We  always  show,  in  such  modes  of  speaking,  that  the 
matter  of  the  expiation  is  conceived  to  be  an  evil,  a 
pain,  a  loss.  And  our  religious  impressions  are  cast  in 
the  same  mold.  "We  never  speak  of  good  deeds,  or 
sentiments,  or  sacrifices  of  love,  as  expiations.  Noth- 
ing is  expiatory  that  does  not  turn  upon  the  fact  of 
damage,  or  pain,  or  self-punishment.  Neither  is  there 
any  difficulty  in  discovering,  from  the  manner  in  which 
theologians  speak  of  expiation,  that  they  think  of  God 
as  having  some  evil,  or  pain,  or  naked  suffering  offered 
him  for  sin,  and  that,  on  account  of  such  offering,  he 
may  release  the  evil,  or  pain,  or  suffering  his  unsatisfied 
wrath  would  otherwise  exact.  Thus,  taking  the  mild- 
est form  of  superstition,  it  will  be  maintained  that 
God's  wrath  is  to  be  averted  by  sacrifice ;  that  is  by 
something  given  to  wrath,  that  is  wrath's  proper  food ; 
which  can  of  course  be  nothing  but  some  kind  of  pain, 
or  evil.  Sometimes  the  expiation  will  be  conceived 
under  moral  conditions,  as  a  transaction  before  God's 
justice;  the  assumption  being  that,  as  God  is  just,  he 
must,  of  course,  lay  upon  wrong  doing  exactly  the  evil 
or  pain  it  deserves,  and  can  only  release  it  by  having 
other  pain  given  him  in  direct  substitution.  Sometimes 
it  will  be  conceived  that  God  is  maintaining  a  good  law 
for  the  world,  which  he  can  do  only  by  annexing  evils, 
in  a  way  of  penalty,  that  fully  express  his  abhorrence 
of  sin,  and  that  such  evils  can  be  released  only  by  giv- 
ing him  others,  in  which  he  may  express  the  same  ab- 


490  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IV. 

horrence.  But  in  all  these  varieties  we  have  plainly 
enough  the  common  element  of  expiation;  viz.,  an 
evil  given  for  sin,  which  is  to  avail  as  being  an  evil. 
It  is  not  conceived,  as  in  the  Scripture  sacrifice,  that 
the  sinning  man  is  to  come  bringing  the  choicest,  most 
beautiful  lamb  of  his  flock,  that,  in  offering  it,  he  may 
express,  and  in  expressing  feel,  something  which  God 
wants  him  to  feel,  and  for  his  own  benefit  show ;  but 
the  pagan  idea  prevails;  the  sacrifice  it  is  claimed, 
must  be  an  expiation — some  evil  brought,  that  is  to 
work  on  God  by  deprecation,  or  self-punishment,  or 
painful  loss.  Nor  does  the  moral  absurdity  of  putting 
any  such  heathenish  construction  on  the  Scripture  sac- 
rifices deter  at  all  from  doing  it.  Still,  as  there  is  sin, 
there  must  be  expiation,  and  that  is  made,  not  by  offer- 
ing up  a  child,  or  a  magistrate,  but  by  the  property  loss 
of  a  sheep — felt  as  a  great  evil,  or  pain,  by  the  soul ! 
A  kind  of  expiation  more  fit  to  kindle  God's  wrath 
than  to  soften  it ;  for  the  more  it  is  felt  as  an  evil  the 
meaner  and  more  heartless  the  sacrifice. 

Having  distinguished  in  this  manner,  what  an  expi- 
ation is,  we  proceed  to  inquire — 

II.  Whether  expiations  for  sins,  taken  as  defined, 
are  admissible  under  the  divine  government? 

And  here  I  do  not  undertake  to  say  that  nothing  can 
be  asserted  under  the  word,  which'  is  worthy  of  respect 
and  acceptance.  Thus  if  a  sinner  of  mankind,  oppressed 
with  a  sense  of  inward  ill-desert  and  shame,  should  seek 
out  voluntarily  some  mode  of  expense,  or  pains-taking, 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  491 

in  which,  considered  as  a  punishment  of  himself,  he 
might  prove  and  express,  and,  by  expression,  exercise 
a  clean  repentance  before  God,  and,  doing  possibie  good 
this,  should  call  it  making  expiation  for  sense  of  expia- 
his  sin,  God  might  properly  enough  ac- 
cept his  unenlightened  sacrifice ;  not  however  because 
of  the  evil  brought  him  in  it,  but  because  the  guilty 
sufferer  came  thus,  trying  honestly  to  trample  his  sins 
and  put  God  in  the  right  concerning  them.  Such  uses 
of  the  word  are  admissible,  but  in  the  sense  of  expia- 
tion above  defined,  the  sense  which  belongs  to  it  when- 
ever we  speak  of  expiatory  sacrifice,  where  giving  God 
an  evil  not  deserved,  we  expect  Him  to  be  placated  in 
regard  to  an  evil  deserved, — in  such  a  sense  expiation 
has  no  character  that  makes  it  approvable  by  intelli- 
gence, or  endurable  by  a  true  sentiment  of  God's  worth 
and  justice. 

If  it  is  a  mere  feeling  in  God  which  is  to  be  placa- 
ted by  an  expiatory  sacrifice,  then  we  have  to  ask,  is 
God  such  a  being  that,  having  a  good  mortgage  title  to 
pain  or  suffering  as  against  an  offender,  he  will  never 
let  go  the  title  till  he  gets  the  pain — if  not  from  him, 
then  from  some  other  ?  Such  a  conception  of  God  is 
simply  shocking.* 

*  Not  even  Dr.  Ma  gee,  when  asserting  expiation,  will  allow  that  God 
is  made  placable  by  it,  insisting  that  He  simply  appoints  it  "  as  the 
means  by  which  to  bestow  forgiveness."  And  when  it  is  urged  that  the 
expiation  can  have  no  use  "but  to  appease  a  Being  who  otherwise 
would  not  forgive  us,"  he  takes  shelter  under  his  ignorance,  from  a  con- 
clusion so  revolting,  and  answers — "  I  know  not,  nor  does  it  concern  me 
to  know,  in  what  manner  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  is  connected  with  the 


492  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,        PART  IV. 

But  the  title  to  pain,  as  against  offenders,  it  will  be 
said  is  simply  what  is  demanded  of  them  by  justice, 

Not  demanded  and  what  he»  as  the  eternal  guardian  of 
by  justice  or  con-  justice,  is  as  truly  bound  to  inflict,  as 

Bistent  with  it.        they  to  guffer<      G()d  therefore  hag  no  op. 

tion,  he  can  not  release  the  foredoomed  evils,  or  pains, 
save  as  they  are  substituted  by  compensative  evils. 
But  suppose  it  to  be  so,  and  that  God,  as  ruler  of  the 
world,  is  bound  to  do  by  every  man  just  as  he  deserves. 
What  means  this  inflexible  adherence  to  the  point  of 
desert,  when,  by  the  supposition,  he  is  going  to  accept, 
in  expiation,  an  evil  not  deserved  ?  He  is  going,  in 
fact,  to  overturn  all  relations  of  desert,  by  taking  pains 
not  deserved,  to  release  pains  that  are.  Is  this  justice  ? 
or  is  it  the  most  complete  and  solemn  abnegation  possi- 
ble of  justice?  To  get  a  pain  out  of  somebody,  is  not 
justice  ;  nothing  answers  to  that  name,  but  the  inexor- 
able, undivertible,  straight-aimed  process  of  execution 
against  the  person  of  the  wrong  doer  himself. 

So  of  punishment,  regarded  as  the  penalty  ordained 
for  the  enforcement  of  law,  necessary  to  be  enforced  for 
the  honor  and  due  authority  of  law.  Doubtless  if 
something  better  can  be  done,  in  given  circumstances, 
than  to  literally  execute  the  penalty,  something  that 
will  keep  the  law  on  foot,  clothe  it  with  still  higher  au- 
thority, and  make  the  dread  of  its  penalty  felt  as  being 

forgiveness  of  sins." — (Vol.  1,  p.  19.)  "When  however  the  crisis  of  the 
argument,  at  this  point,  is  gone  by,  he  recovers  from  his  ignorance  and 
Is  able  to  assert  very  positively  that  the  justice  of  God  is  satisfied  by  the 
sacrifice  of  expiation. 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  493 

even  more  imminent  than  before,  a  qualification  of  vin- 
dicatory justice  so  prepared  will  do  no  harm.  But  to 
remit  a  punishment  or  pain  deserved,  in  consideration 
of  a  similar  punishment  or  pain  not  deserved,  accepted 
by  an  innocent  party,  so  far  from  being  any  due  support 
of  law,  is  the  worst  possible  mockery  of  it.  It  belongs  to 
the  very  idea  of  punishment,  that  it  fall  on  the  trans- 
gressor himself,  not  on  any  other,  even  though  he  be 
willing  to  receive  it.  The  law  reads  "  do  this  or  thou 
shalt  die,"  not  "do  this  or  somebody  shall  die."  A  fine, 
or  a  debt,  may  be  paid  by  any  body  ;  but  a  punishment 
sticks  immovably  to  the  wrong  doer,  and  no  commuta- 
tion, expiation,  or  transfer  of  places  can  remove  it. 

In  the  story  of  Zaleucus  often  referred  to  as  an  illus- 
tration, nothing  is  shown  but  a  very  sorry  fraud  prac- 
ticed on  the  law.  The  father  finding  his  story  of  Zaieu- 
son  guilty  of  a  crime,  whose  prescribed  CU8> 

penalty  in  the  law  is  that  the  malefactor  shall  have  his 
eyes  put  out,  contrives  to  get  off  his  son  with  the  loss 
of  one  eye,  by  consenting,  in  a  most  fond  paternity,  to 
lose  one  of  his  own  eyes,  in  substitution  for  the  other. 
But  the  law  did  not  require,  for  its  penalty,  the  loss  of 
two  eyes  ;  it  required  the  putting  out  of  the  two  eyes  of 
the  transgressor ;  that  is  that  he  be  reduced  to  blind- 
ness for  the  rest  of  his  life.  After  all,  this  old  historic 
myth,  so  often  celebrated  as  an  example  of  rigid  and 
impartial  justice,  is  only  an  example  of  bad  law,  or  of 
a  very  tenderly  parental  sophistry  enacted  for  the  eva- 
sion of  law. 

Much  better  and  more  solidly  true  to  law  is  Crorn- 
42 


494  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IV. 

well's  answer  in  the  case  of  George  Fox.  The  facts  are 
given  by  Fox  himself  in  his  Journal.*  He  was  lying 
Cromwell  and  in  prison,  at  the  time,  in  a  basement  pit, 
George  Fox.  inexpressibly  filthy,  called  Doomsdale. 
And  he  says:  "  While  I  was  in  prison  in  Lancaster,  a 
friend  went  to  Oliver  Cromwell  and  offered  himself, 
body  for  body,  to  lie  in  Doomsdale  in  my  stead,  if  he 
would  take  him  and  let  me  have  liberty.  Which  thing 
so  struck  him  that  he  said  to  his  great  men  and  council, 
4  which  of  you  would  do  as  much  for  me,  if  I  were  in 
the  same  condition  ?'  And  though  he  did  not  accept 
of  the  friend's  offer,  but  said  he  could  not  do  it,  for 
tJiat  it  was  contrary  to  law,  yet  the  truth  thereby  came 
mightily  over  him." 

It  might  also  be  urged  that,  if  expiation  were  a  more 
feasible   and  better  element  than  it  is,   not  derogatory 

Trinity  rightly  to  ^e  c^aracter  °f  G°d,  not  incompatible 
held,  excludes  with  first  principles  of  j  ustice,  not  a  way 
of  compensating  law  that  takes  away  its 
most  essential,  highest  moral  attribute  as  law  ;  viz.,  the 
unalterable  personality  of  its  distributions — if,  in  all 
these  respects,  it  were  a  morally  admissible  and  even 
wholesome  conception,  still  there  is  a  difficulty  in  it,  as 
far  as  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  is  concerned,  which  is  in- 
surmountable. If  the  gist  of  that  sacrifice  consists  in 
the  fact,  that  Christ  in  atoning,  or  expiating  sin  by  his 
death,  offers  the  simple  endurance  of  so  much  evil  or 
pain,  we  can  not  but  ask  who  is  Christ,  in  all  that  gives 
significance  to  his  life,  but  the  incarnate  Word  of  God's 

*  Fox's  Journal,  Glasgow  edition,  p.  262. 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  495 

eternity  ?  Take  whatsoever  view  of  Christ's  person  we 
may,  no  one  can  imagine  that  his  sacrifice  was  simply  a 
man's  sacrifice,  a  transaction  of  his  merely  human  na- 
ture. Besides  the  pain  he  suffered,  that  of  his  agony, 
that  of  his  cross,  was  in  all  but  the  smallest,  scarcely 
appreciable  part,  a  moral  pain,  the  pain  of  his  moral 
sensibility, — his  love,  his  purity,  his  compassionate  feel- 
ing, that  which  it  was  a  great  part  of  his  errand  to  re- 
veal, that  which  not  to  have  suffered,  under  such  condi- 
tions, would  have  been  a  virtual  disproof  of  his  great- 
ness and  divinity.  So  far,  at  least,  his  pains  are  pains 
of  his  divine  nature.  Does  then  God's  right  hand  offer 
pains  to  his  left,  and  so  make  expiation  for  the  sins  of 
the  world  ?  How  many  Gods  have  we  ?  Not  any 
more  truly  three,  or  less  simply  one,  because  we  hold 
the  faith  of  a  trinity.  Expiation  appears  to  suppose 
that  we  have  at  least  two,  one  placating  the  other,  and 
he  again  accepting  the  expiation  of  sins  in  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  first.  Faithfully  holding  that  our  God  is 
one,  expiation  loses  opportunity.  There  is  no  place  for 
it ;  no  such  transaction  can  be  had  for  the  want  of  parties, 
and  the  matter  is  incredible  as  being  simply  impossible. 

Holding  now  these  very  sufficient  objections  to  the 
matter  of  expiation,  or  expiatory  sacrifice,  we  should 
not  expect  to  find  it  recognized  in  the  Scriptures. 
Passing  then  to  the  question  that  remains,  we  inquire  : 

III.  Is  there  any  such  thing  as  expiation  contained, 
or  supposed  to  be  wrought  in  the  Scripture  sacrifices  ? 

The  common  assumption  is  that  the  sin  offerings  of 


496  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IV. 

the  Old  Testament  and  the  offering  of  Christ  in  the 
New  are  all  expiatory,  and  in  that  fact  have  their 
value,  contrary  to  all  such  impressions. 

I  am  able,  after  a  most  thorough  and  complete  exam- 
ination of  the  Scriptures  to  affirm  with  confidence, 

No  trace  of  ex-  tnat  tlie;y  exhibit  no  trace  of  expiation. 
piation  in  the  I  had  supposed  that  the  impression  so 
generally  prevalent  must  be  well  ground- 
ed, but  my  suspicions  were  awakened  by  observing  one 
or  two  points  where  the  impression  failed,  and  was 
tempted  thus  to  push  the  inquiry  to  its  limit.  That 
such  an  opinion  has  been  so  long  and  generally  held  of 
the  Scripture  sacrifices,  I  can  only  account  for,  in  the 
manner  already  suggested  ;  viz.,  that  there  is  a  natural 
tendency  in  all  worthy  ideas  of  religion  to  lapse  into 
such  as  are  unworthy — repentance,  for  example,  into 
doing  penance — that  the  sacrifices  could  easily  be  cor- 
rupted in  this  manner,  and,  in  fact,  were  by  all  the  pa- 
gan religions ;  and  then  that  there  was  imported  back 
into  the  constructions  of  holy  Scripture,  a  notion  of  ex- 
piation, as  pertaining  to  sacrifice,  under  the  plausible 
but  unsuspected  sanction  of  classic  uses  and  associations. 
Nothing  could  be  more  natural  and  it  appears  to  be  ac- 
tually true.  Indeed  it  is  a  common  thing,  even  now, 
to  illustrate  the  manner  and  supposed  necessity  of  ex- 
piation for  sin,  by  citations  from  Hesiod,  Homer  and 
other  classic  writers. 

It  is  impossible,  of  course,  in  a  discussion  of  this  na- 
ture, to  go  over  a  complete  review  of  the  whole  series 
of  Scripture  instances  and  uses,  but  the  argument  will 


CHAP.  H.  AND    EXPIATION.  497 

be  tolerably  well  conceived  under  heads  of  classifica- 
tion such  as  follow. 

1.  That  nothing  was  made  of  the  victim's  death, 
or  pain  of  dying,  in  the  ancient  sacrifi-      Nothing  made  of 
ces,  was  sufficiently  shown  in  the  last  thc  victim'8  Pains- 
previous  chapter. 

2.  Expiations  are  always  conspicuous  in  their  mean- 
ing.    No  man  could  even  raise  a  doubt  of  the  expiatory 
object  of  the  pagan  sacrifices ;  no  such      Expiationsought 
doubt  was  ever  entertained.  In  this  view,   to  be  palpable,  and 
if  the  scripture  sacrifices  do  not  show   l 

an  expiatory  meaning  on  their  face  and  declare  them- 
selves unmistakably  in  that  character,  if  it  is  a  matter 
of  rational  doubt  or  debate,  such  doubt  is  a  clear  pre- 
sumptive evidence  that  their  object  is  somehow  different. 

3.  The  original  of  the  word  atone,  or  make  atonement, 
in  the  Hebrew  scripture,  carries  no  such  idea  of  expia- 
tion.    It  simply  speaks  of  covering,  or      The  at0nemcnts 
making  cover  for  sin,  and  is  sufficiently  nofc  expiations, 
answered  by  any  thing  which  removes  it,  hides  it  from 
the  sight,  brings  into  a  state  of  reconciliation,  where  the 
impeachment  of  it  is  gone.     Accordingly  it  is  some- 
times   translated   to    reconcile   or  make  reconciliation-* 
sometimes  to   pardon  /f   sometimes  to  purify,  cleanse, 
purge.%     It  is  also  true  that  this  word  is  sometimes 
translated,  in  the  Septuagint,  by  the  same  Greek  word, 

*  Lev.  viii,  15 ;  2  Chron.  xxix,  24 ;  Ezek.  xlv,  20  ;  Dan.  ix,  24. 
f  2  Chron.  xxx,  18 ;  Jer.  xviii,  23. 

J  Ex.  xxix,  36,— xxx,  10;   Numb,  xxxv,  33;   1  Sam.  iii,  14;    Ezek. 
xliii,  20-26 ;  Isa.  vi,  7. 

42* 


498  ATONEMENT,    PKOPITIATION,       PART  IV. 

or  a  word  of  the  same  root,  as  that  which  is  translated 
propitiation  in  the  New  Testament ;  and  it  is  also  true 
that  this  Greek  word  is  often  translated  into  Latin  and 
English,  by  the  word  expiation.  But  to  draw  an  argu- 
ment from  this,  for  the  fact  of  expiation  in  the  Hebrew 
sacrifices,  is  to  go  upon  a  long  circuit  of  travel,  and  get 
nothing  that  amounts  to  evidence  at  the  end.  For  the 
classic  tongues  would  certainly  be  apt  to  associate  expi- 
ation with  sacrifice,  and  the  Septuagint  would  not  be 
likely  to  avoid  that  mistake.  Every  thing  turns  here, 
manifestly,  on  the  meaning  of  the  original  Hebrew 
word ;  and  as  the  root  or  symbol  of  this  word  means 
simply  to  cover,  we  can  see  for  ourselves  that,  while  it 
might  be  applied  as  a  figure,  to  denote  a  covering  by 
expiation,  it  can  certainly  as  -well  and  as  naturally  be 
applied  to  any  thing  which  hides  or  takes  away  trans- 
gression. 

4.  Atonements  are  accordingly  said  to  be  made, 
where  the  very  idea  of  expiation  is  excluded ;  and 

Atonements  that  sometimes  where  there  is,  in  .fact, 
exclude  expiation.  no  sacrifice  at  all.  Thus  atonements 
were  made  for  the  sanctifying  of  the  altar ;  that  is,  for 
sanctifying  it  in  men's  feeling ;  for  as  it  was  necessary 
to  the  liturgic  power  of  the  sacrifice  on  the  sentiment 
of  the  worshipers,  that  the  blood  of  their  offering 
should  be  made  to  be  a  sacred  thing,  so  it  was  necessa- 
ry that  the  altar  itself  should  be  invested  with  a  real 
and  felt  sanctity.  Thus  we  read,*  "  Seven  days  shalt 

thou  make  an  atonement  for  the  altar,  and  sanctify  it, 

\ 

*  Exodus  xxix,  31. 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  499 

and  it  shall  be  an  altar  most  holy."  To  give  an  exam- 
ple where  expiation  is  excluded  because  there  is  no  sac- 
rifice, Moses,  when  the  people  had  sinned  so  grievously, 
in  the  matter  of  the  golden  calf,  said,*  "  Now  I  will  go 
up  unto  the  Lord,  peradventure  I  shall  make  an  atone- 
ment for  your  sin."  He  went  up  accordingly  and  made 
intercession  for  them,  in  words  of  supplication,  without 
any  sacrifice  at  all  and  this  was  his  atonement.  Plainly 
enough  there  is  no  expiation  in  these  cases.  In  the 
first  there  is  none,  because  there  is  no  sin  upon  the  altar 
to  be  expiated,  and  in  the  second  because  there  is  no 
sacrifice.  The  atoning  spoken  of  is  a  purifying,  or  a 
making  reconciliation,  without  a  possibility  of  expia- 
tion. 

5.  It  is  a  great  point  that  expiations,  or  expiatory 
sacrifices,  are  certainly  not  offered  where  we  should  ex- 
pect them  to  be,  if  they  are  offered  at  all. 
Thus  in  the  case  just  referred  to  of  the 


sin  of  the  golden  calf,  where  the  sottish  should     exPect 

them. 

convictions  of  the  people  have  been 
roused,  and  their  fears  raised  into  a  panic  by  the  terri- 
ble judgment  of  God  upon  them,  Moses  himself  speaks 
of  the  "  atonement"  they  need  for  their  sin  ;  but  instead 
of  a  great  and  solemn  sacrifice  of  expiation,  where,  if 
ever,  it  was  to  be  expected,  he  undertakes  their  case  for 
them  himself,  in  his  own  personal  intercession  before 
God.  So  again,  in  the  great  mutiny  of  the  people  that 
followed  the  judgment  of  Korah,  where  a  deadly 
plague  is  falling  upon  them  for  their  sin,  Moses  orders 

*  Exodus  xxxii,  30. 


500  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PAKT  IV. 

no  sacrifice  of  expiation,  but  he  says  to  Aaron*  "  Take 
a  censer  and  put  fire  therein  from  off  the  altar,  and  put 
on  incense,  and  go  quickly  into  the  congregation,  and 
make  atonement  for  them ;  for  there  is  wrath  gone  out 
from  the  Lord."  The  plague  is  stayed ;  not  by  expia- 
tion certainly ;  for  it  is  never  supposed  that  there  is  any 
such  thing  as  expiation  by  incense.  And  yet  this  was 
a  case  for  expiation,  if  any  such  ever  existed.  "We 
have  another  case  like  it,  in  the  great  reformation  of 
Josiah,f  where  the  sacred  book  is  found  in  the  temple, 
and  the  king  and  people,  on  a  public  reading  of  the 
book,  are  put  in  such  dread  of  the  wrath  of  God  about 
to  overtake  them,  in  the  curses  of  the  book  denounced 
upon  their  sin,  that  a  grand  convocation  of  Israel  is 
called  to  avert  the  impending  judgments.  Now  again 
is  the  time  for  a  great  sacrifice  of  expiation ;  and  yet 
there  is  no  sacrifice  made,  or  prepared ;  but  the  king, 
seeing  no  better  and  surer  way  of  deliverance,  takes  his 
position  before  the  assembled  multitudes,  and  requires 
them  all  to  join  him  in  a  solemn  covenant  to  forsake 
their  evil  ways,  and  walk  in  all  the  statutes  of  the 
book.  So  again,  when  Ezra  is  overtaken  with  great 
concern  for  the  nation,  on  account  of  the  general  inter- 
marriage of  priests  and  people  with  idolatrous  women, 
he  betakes  himself  to  fasting,  confessing,  weeping,  and 
casting  himself  down  before  the  house  of  God ;  the  people 
also  weep  sore  with  him ;  but  no  sacrifice  of  expiation  is 
offered,  and  no  other  way  of  averting  God's  anger  is 
thought  of,  than  a  general  and  total  forsaking  of  the 

*  Numbers  xvi,  46.  f  2  Chronicles,  xxxiv. 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  501 

sin  ;  which  every  transgressor  is  required  to  do  without 
equivocation  or  delay.*  Now  in  all  such  cases,  and 
they  are  many,  we  look  for  expiation  and  do  not  find  it, 
and  what  is  quite  as  remarkable,  there  is  no  case  to  be 
found  where  God's  anger,  in  a  day  of  guilt  and  fear,  is 
placated,  or  even  attempted  to  be,  by  a  clearly  expiato- 
ry sacrifice.  It  was  not  so  among  the  pagan  nations, 
and  it  could  not  be  so  here,  if  expiation  were  any  rec- 
ognized part  of  the  national  religion. 

6.  The  requirement  of  the  heart,  as  a  condition  neces- 
sary to  acceptance  in  the  sacrifices,  is  a  very  strong  pre- 
sumptive evidence  that  no  idea  of  ex-  The  requirement 
piation  belonged  to  sacrifice.  At  first,  of  the  heart, 
nothing  appears  to  be  said  of  the  spirit  against  expiation' 
in  which  the  offering  is  to  be  made,  though  it  is  not  to 
be  supposed  that  it  was  ever  accepted,  in  any  but  a 
merely  ritual  and  ceremonial  sense,  unless  coupled  un- 
consciously, or  implicitly,  with  a  true  feeling  of  repent- 
ance. As  already  observed,  there  was  at  first,  almost 
no  capacity  of  receiving  truths  and  being  exercised  in 
states,  by  reflection.  Spiritual  impressions  and  results 
of  character  were  to  be  operated  for  a  time  transaction- 
ally  only,  under  liturgical  forms  of  sacrifice.  And  a 
beginning  made  in  this  way,  connected  with  a  contin- 
ued drill  under  miraculous  Providences,  was  to  operate 
a  course  of  development,  and  prepare  a  more  reflective 
capacity.  By  and  by  this  will  so  far  be  accomplished, 
that  the  prophets  and  other  teachers  of  the  people 
will  begin  to  put  them  in  a  consideration  of  their  senti- 

*  Ezra  x,  1-15. 


502  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IT. 

ments,  and  the  amendment  of  their  lives,  in  their  sacri- 
fices. This  will  bring  on  frequent  rebukes  of  hypocri- 
sy in  them,  and  contrasts  between  mere  heartless  offer- 
ings and  a  genuine  holiness  of  life,  that  relatively  sink 
the  importance  of  sacrifice,  and  sometimes  appear  to  al- 
most sink  it  out  of  sight,  as  a  thing  of  little  account. 
Indeed  we  are  made  to  feel,  before  the  prophetic  era  is 
closed  up,  that  sacrifice  is  getting  to  be  well  nigh  out- 
grown, or  superseded,  by  a  more  reflective  way  of  ex- 
ercise, that  is  moderated  and  guided  by  truth. 

Now  that  any  such  religious  progress  could  have 
been  accomplished  under  a  training  of  expiatory  sacri- 
fice appears  to  be  quite  impossible.  The  giving  of  evils 
to  God  to  obtain  the  release  of  evils,  is  a  practice  so 
nearly  akin  to  superstition,  so  barren  of  all  right  senti- 
ment, so  little  likely  to  stimulate  habits  of  personal 
conviction,  that  we  rather  look  for  a  lapse  into  feti- 
chism  under  it.  Such  a  kind  of  sacrifice  requires  nothing 
obviously  but  the  placation  of  God  by  a  contribution 
of  the  necessary  evils,  and  they  may  as  well  be  con- 
tributed in  one  feeling  as  another.  Enough  that  they 
are  forthcoming,  no  matter  in  what  feeling,  if  only  the 
due  penance  be  made.  Under  a  plan  of  sacrifice  con- 
trived to  work  on  the  sentiments  of  the  worshipers, 
and  quicken  germs  of  holy  feeling  in  them,  a  different 
result  might  be  effected, — never  under  sacrifices  of  ex- 
piation. 

To  bear  out  these  strictures,  and  show  that  they  are 
verified  by  facts,  I  will  refer  to  only  a  few  of  the  many 
scripture  citations  that  might  be  offered.  Thus,  taking 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  503 

one  example  from  the  historic  books,  we  find  that  Saul, 
an  overgrown  child  of  superstition,  offers  a  sacrifice  on 
two  several  occasions  in  his  own  way,  disregarding 
God's  appointed  way  and  even  his  special  command, — 
in  the  first  instance,  because,  in  going  to  battle,  he 
wants  to  "  make  supplication  to  the  Lord  ;"*  and  in  the 
second,  because,  having  gained  a  victory,  he  wants  to 
honor  God  in  a  grand  ovation  of  sacrifice — whereupon 
Samuel  meets  him  in  sharp  rebuke,  saying,  f  "  Hath  the 
Lord  as  great  delight  in  burnt  offerings  and  sacrifices  as 
in  obeying  the  voice  of  the  Lord  ?  Behold  (this  ap- 
pears to  be  an  already  accepted  proverb,)  to  obey  is 
better  than  sacrifice,  and  to  hearken  than  the  fat  of 
rams," 

The  same  sentiment  is  reiterated  many  times  by  Da- 
vid,:): testifying  his  readiness  to  yield  God  what  is  better 
than  all  sacrifice,  an  obedient  heart  In  the  Psalm  first 
mentioned,  he  uses,  out  of  his  own  personal  feeling, 
just  the  language  that  is  afterwards  applied  to  Christ, § 
"  Sacrifice  and  offering  thou  didst  not  desire,  mine  ears 
hast  thou  opened ;  burnt  offering  and  sin  offering  hast 
thou  not  required.  Then  said  I,  lo,  I  come ;  in  the 
volume  of  the  book  it  is  written  of  me,  I  delight  to  do 
thy  will,  O  God,  yea,  thy  law  is  within  my  breast."  As 
if  it  were  every  thing,  even  at  the  stage  of  development 
then  reached,  to  have  God's  law  in  the  heart ;  sacrifices 
practically  nothing — "  The  sacrifices  of  God  a  broken 
spirit"  Isaiah  holds  the  same  sentiment  in  a  strain  of 

*  1   Samuel  xiii,  12.  f  1  Samuel  xv,  10-22. 

J  As  in  Psalms  xl,  1,  and  li.  §  Hebrews  x,  6-9. 


504  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IT. 

indignant  rebuke,* — "  To  what  purpose  is  the  multi- 
tude of  your  sacrifices  unto  me  saith  the  Lord  ?  I  am 
full  of  the  burnt  offerings  of  rams  and  the  fat  of  fed 
beasts.  Bring  no  more  vain  oblations.  Wash  you,  and 
make  you  clean,  put  away  the  evil  of  your  doings  from 
before  mine  eyes."  And  for  them  who  will  receive 
such  counsel,  he  adds  the  promise  of  a  lustral  effect  or 
cleansing  that  mere  expiations  do  not  even  think  of — 
"  Though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they  shall  be  as  white 
as  snow,  though  they  be  red  like  crimson  they  shall  be 
as  wool."  Jeremiah  and  Amos  make  the  same  remon- 
strance, f  Micah  turns  the  point  of  his  rebuke  directly 
down  upon  expiation  itself ;  alluding  to  the  manner  in 
which  the  heathens  offer  their  children,  and  suggesting 
a  parallel  between  the  superstitions  of  his  own  people 
in  their  heartless  ostentations  and  penances  of  sacrifice, 
and  the  expiations  of  the  false  gods.J  "  Wherewith 
shall  I  come  before  the  Lord  and  bow  myself  before 
the  high  God  ?  Shall  I  come  before  him  with  burnt 
offerings,  with  calves  of  a  year  old  ?  Will  the  Lord  be 
pleased  with  thousands  of  rams,  or  with  ten  thousands 
of  rivers  of  oil  ?  Shall  I  give  my  first-born  for  my 
transgression,  the  fruit  of  my  body  for  the  sin  of  my 
soul  ?  He  hath  showed  thee,  0  man,  what  is  good ; 
and  what  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  just- 
ly, and  to  love  mercy  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy 
God." 

When    the    Prophets,  who    are    the    preachers  of 

*  Isaiah  i,  10-18.        f  Jeremiah  vii,  21-23;  Amos  v,  21-24. 
J  Micah  vi,  6-8. 


CHAP.  IL  AND    EXPIATION.  505 

the  old  religion,  are  found  speaking  of  its  rites  in  this 
way,  two  things  are  evident;  first,  that  the  rites  are 
very  much  outgrown  by  the  moral  and  spiritual  ideas 
developed ;  and  secondly,  that  no  such  growth  in  re- 
flective capacity  has  been  accomplished,  under  any 
stimulus  received  from  the  placation  of  God  by  expia- 
tory sacrifices. 

7.  The  uses  of  blood  in  sacrifice  have  no  such  con- 
nection with  an  expiatory  office,  as  appears  to  be  sup- 
posed in  the  common  modes  of  speaking  Uscs  of  blood 
concerning  it.  Something  we  say,  must  not  expiatory- 
bleed,  sin  must  draw  blood  before  it  can  be  forgiven — 
"without  shedding  of  blood  there  is  no  remission." 
The  blood  is  spoken  of,  and  the  bloody  rites,  and  the 
bloody  sweat,  and  the  cross  dripping  blood,  as  if  some 
dreadful  inquest  were  gone  forth  against  the  world,  and 
nothing  could  sate  the  divine  anger  but  to  see  blood 
flow  for  a  ransom.  Now  all  such  impressions  are  un- 
historic  and  exactly  contrary  to  the  scripture  ideas  of 
blood ;  they  carry,  in  fact,  a  strong  scent  of  supersti- 
tion. There  is  no  vindictive  figure  in  the  scripture 
uses  of  blood.  It  is  not  death,  but  life,  that  is  in  it. 
Hedged  about  by  walls  of  prohibition,  as  regards  all 
common  uses,  it  is  made  to  be  a  holy  element  to  men's 
feeling,  that  when  it  is  applied,  in  the  offering,  it  may 
seem  to  purify  and  quicken  every  thing  it  touches.  As 
the  blood  is  the  life,  so  it  is  to  be  life-giving ;  a  symbol 
of  God's  inward  purifying  and  regenerating  baptism  in 
the  remission  of  sins.  The  associations  of  blood  are  to 
have  no  such  appalling,  fateful  hue  as  expiation  sup- 

43 


506  ATONEMENT,    PKOPITI ATION,       PART  IV. 

poses,  or  as  they  might  get  from  battle-fields,  and  scaffolds, 
and  the  stains  of  midnight  murder ;  it  is  not  to  be  the 
blood  that  cries  to  God  from  the  ground,  but  the  blood 
that  speaketh  better  things  than  that  of  Abel — peace, 
forgiveness,  holiness,  and  life.  And  in  just  this  view 
it  is,  that  blood  becomes  a  type  of  so  great  significance, 
in  the  higher  uses  of  the  Christly  sacrifice  itself — it  is 
used,  in  this  manner,  not  because  it  signifies  expiation, 
but  because  God's  promise,  and  forgiving,  purifying  love 
are  in  it  as  an  element  of  life. 

8.  It  is  a  fact  worthy  of  distinct  attention,  that  the 
passover  sacrifice  has  certainly  nothing  of  expiation  in  it. 
The  passover  This  is  the  sacrifice  that  Christ  is  celebra- 
not  expiatory,  ^ing  when  he  institutes  his  supper,  and  the 
blessing  of  the  bread  and  wine  in  this  first  observance 
of  the  supper  is  probably  the  closing  scene  of  the  pass- 
over  observance  itself.  Here  it  is  that  Christ,  taking 
the  cup,  says, — "  This  is  my  blood  of  the  new  testa- 
ment, which  is  shed,  for  many,  for  the  remission  of 
sins."  And  again,  when  it  is  mentioned  at  the  cruci- 
fixion, as  another  point  of  correspondence,  "that  it 
might  be  fulfilled,  a  bone  of  him  shall  not  be  broken," 
the  reference  made  is  to  the  passover  lamb.*  And 
what  is  a  more  practical  evidence  of  the  close  affiliation 
of  the  passover  and  the  work  of  Christ,  the  passing  by 
of  the  destroying  angel,  wherever  the  door-posts  are 
found  sprinkled  with  the  blood  of  the  lamb,  is  a  good 
and  expressive  type,  or  symbol,  of  the  deliverance  of 
souls  by  the  blood  of  Christ.  And  yet  there  is  clearly  no 

Exodus  xii,  46. 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  507 

thought  of  expiation  for  sin  in  the  passover  rite.  It  is 
given  simply  as  a  pledge  of  favor  and  deliverance  to  the 
people,  and  is  continued  afterwards  not  as  an  expiatory, 
but  as  a  commemorative  and  partly  festive  rite.  "  Seven 
days  thou  shalt  eat  unleavened  bread,  and  in  the  seventh 
day,  [the  passover]  shall  be  a  feast  unto  the  Lord.  And 
thou  shalt  shew  thy  son,  in  that  day,  saying — This  is 
done  because  of  that  which  the  Lord  did  unto  me, 
when  I  came  forth  out  of  Egypt."*  Finding  thus  no 
reference  whatever,  in  the  rite,  to  an  expiation  of  sin,  how 
much  shall  we  expect  to  find  in  the  grand  passover 
grace  of  Christ  himself,  taken  as  a  continuance  of  it, 
and  represented  by  the  Christian  supper  taken  from  it  ? 
9.  Observe  in  this  connection  how  these  rites  of 
blood,  or  bloody  sacrifice,  are  connected  habitually  with 
all  the  most  joyous  and  grandest  religious  Tho  festivitie3 
festivities.  All  the  pomps,  jubilees,  his-  of  sacrifices  a- 
toric  commemorations,  public  reforma-  f 
tions,  national  deliverances,  are  celebrated  in  rivers  of 
blood,  and  lift  their  joy,  by  the  smoke  of  burnt  offer- 
ings, coupled  with  processions  of  music  and  shouts  of 
praise.  In  this  way,  the  sacrifices  get  invested  with 
associations  that  make  the  phrase  "sacrifices  of  joy  " 
synonymous  with  sacrifice  itself.  Thus  David  cele- 
brates the  preparation  made  for  the  building  of  the  tem- 
ple, in  the  sacrifice  of  a  thousand  bullocks,  and  a  thou- 
sand rams,  and  a  thousand  lambs,  and  the  people  eat 
and  drink  "  before  the  Lord  on  that  day,  with  joy  and 
gladness."f  Solomon  again  celebrates  the  dedication 

*  Exodus  xiii,  7-8.        f  1  Chronicles  xxix,  21-22. 


508  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IV 

of  the  temple,  in  a  grand  festivity  of  sacrifice,  contin- 
ued for  a  whole  week,  in  which  twenty  thousand  oxen 
and  a  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  sheep  are  offered.* 
Hezekiah's  feast  of  reformation  and  his  passover  that 
folio  wed,  f  are  celebrated  -in  the  same  profusion  of 
blood,  and  sacrifice,  and  joy.  In  all  which  it  is  suffi- 
ciently evident,  that  burnt  offerings  and  rites  of  blood 
are  not  associated,  whether  in  the  passover  institution 
or  elsewhere,  with  notions  of  penal  sanction  for  sin,  or 
contributed  as  expiations  to  avert  God's  anger  on  ac- 
count of  it. 

10.  It  is  important,  as  a  final  consideration,  to  notice 
that,  where  the  rite  of  sacrifice  bears  a  look  of  expia- 
tion, and  the  instances  are  taken  as  facts  of  expiation, 
a  closer  examination  shows,  in  every  case,  that  the 
impression  is  not  supported  by  the  transaction.  The 
The  sacrifice  of  sacrifice  of  Job  for  his  sons  may  be  taken 
Job-  as  an  example.  As  they  are  feasting,  and 

as  it  would  seem  roistering  in  excess  from  day  to  day, 
he  is  afflicted  with  concern  for  them,  and  goes  before 
God  with  his  daily  offering  on  their  account,  saying — 
"  It  may  be  that  my  sons  have  sinned  and  cursed  God 
in  their  hearts."J  But  this,  at  most,  is  a  supplicatory, 
not  an  expiatory  offering ;  for  he  is  even  hoping,  it  will 
be  observed,  that  so  great  sin  may  not  have  been  com- 
mitted ;  and  the  mere  contingency  of  sin  is  certainly  no 
fit  occasion  for  expiation.  As  we  just  now  saw,  in  the 
case  of  Saul,  sacrifice  was  even  commonly  considered 
to  be  a  way  of  prayer. 

*  2  Chron.  vii,  5.        f  2  Chron.  xxix  and  xxx.        \  Job  i,  5. 


CHAP.  II  AND    EXPIATION.  509 

Besides  this  sacrifice  of  Job,  I  find  no  other  historic 
instance  or  example,  where  there  is  even  so  much  as  a 
semblance  of  the  expiatory  character.  But  there  is  a 
complete  day's-work  of  sacrifice  circumstantially  pre- 
scribed, a  great  day  of  atonement,  some- 
times called  "  the  great  day  of  expiation,"  day  Of  expiation 
sometimes  the  day.  where  the  remem-  without  exPia- 

tion. 

brance  of  sins,  once  a  year,  is  religiously 
observed,  and  where,  as  it  is  commonly  believed,  expia- 
tion is  the  simple  and  sole  office  of  the  observance. 
Here,  if  any  where,  the  fact  of  an  expiatory  sacrifice 
will  be  found.  I  shall  therefore  conclude  my  investiga- 
tion of  this  very  important  question,  by  a  careful  re- 
view of  the  solemnities  of  the  day  referred  to,  as  they 
are  detailed  in  the  record  of  its  institution. 

It  is  a  day  specially  devoted,  we  shall  see,  to  the 
guilty  and  bad  state  of  sin  and  the  sublime  need  it  cre- 
ates of  a  reconciliation  with  God.  The  intention  plain- 
ly is  to  make  it  the  most  serious  and  impressive  day  of 
the  year ;  a  day  of  strong  conviction  and,  if  possible, 
of  hearty  repentance  and  true  turning  unto  God.  A 
whole  chapter  and  a  long  one,*  is  occupied  with  a  speci- 
fication of  the  observances.  But  we  shall  be  struck,  in 
the  review  of  them,  not  with  any  discovery  of  an  expi- 
atory element,  but  with  the  fact,  that  every  thing  is  or- 
dered with  such  a  manifestly  artistic  study  and  skill,  to 
beget,  in  minds  too  crude  for  the  reflective  modes  of  exer- 
cise, a  whole  set  of  impressions  answering  to  those  of 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  salvation ;  the  holiness  of  God, 

*  Leviticus  xvi. 


510  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IV. 

the  uncleanness  and  deep  guilt  of  sin,  and  the  faith  of 
God's  forgiving  mercy.  The  whole  day,  from  sunset  to 
sunset,  as  Jahn  describes  it,  is  to  be  a  day  of  strict  fast- 
ing. All  the  common  works  of  life  are  to  cease,  and 
the  people  are  to  have  it  as  a  day  in  which  to  "afflict 
their  souls."  Not  that,  by  such  self-affliction,  an  expia- 
tory penance  or  pain  is  to  be  suffered  for  sin.  The 
same  expression  is  familiarly  used  by  us  in  reference  to 
fasting,  with  no  thought  certainly  of  expiation.  It 
simply  means  that,  with  and  by  help  of  it,  we  may  set- 
tle our  mind  into  a  just  impression  of  the  un worthiness 
and  guiltiness  of  our  sin,  and  feel  it  as  we  ought  in  the 
sorrow  of  a  true  repentance.  "We  do  not  afflict  our- 
selves that  God  may  be  placated  by  our  pains,  but  we 
choke  down  the  appetites,  we  put  the  body  under  by  a 
violent  downward  thrust,  and  proclaim  a  truce  to  the 
strivings  of  gain,  that,  in  stillness  and  before  God,  we 
may  receive  a  just  impression  of  our  ill-desert  as  sin- 
ners. 

Having  the  day  fenced  about  in  this  manner,  and  de- 
voted to  such  purposes,  all  the  rites  of  the  day  are  con- 
trived to  give  it  effect.  A  kind  of  fundamental  con- 
ception which  lies  back  of  all  and  colors  every  thing 
in  the  feeling,  is  that  there  is  a  universal,  overspread- 
ing uncleanness  to  be  removed,—"  because  of  the  un- 
cleanness of  the  children  of  Israel,  and  because  of  their 
transgressions  in  all  their  sins."  It  is  as  if  every  thing 
handled,  touched,  breathed  upon,  or  even  looked  upon 
by  them,  had  taken  some  defilement  from  them ;  "the 
holy  sanctuary,"  "  the  tabernacle  of  the  congregation," 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  511 

"  the  altar,"  "  the  priests,"  and  "  all  the  people  of  the 
congregation ;"  all  which  are  accordingly  .to  be  atoned, 
or  purified,  in  turn.  And  the  rites  of  the  day  are  all 
so  ordered  as  to  produce  the  profoundest  impression 
possible  of  the  separateness,  or  holiness  of  God ;  also 
to  encourage  the  faith  of  his  acceptance,  and  of  the  ac- 
tual remission ;  that  is,  of  the  removal  or  cleansing  of, 
the  sin. 

The  high  priest  forbidden,  on  pain  of  death  to  enter 
the  holy  of  holies,  the  sacred  recess  of  the  temple 
where  God  dwells,  on  any  other  day  of  the  year,  is  this 
day  to  go  in  and  be  accepted  there  for  himself  and  the 
people.  This  he  is  to  do,  putting  the  people  back  even 
from  the  tabernacle  of  the  congregation,  that  they  may 
not  come  too  nigh,  while  their  sin  is  upon  them.  He 
is  to  be  anointed  and  sanctified  for  this,  with  a  particu- 
lar ointment,  not  to  be  made  or  used  for  any  other  pur- 
pose on  pain  of  death.*  And  the  incense  he  is  to  offer  • 
is  made  by  a  divine  recipe,  and  is  to  be  kept,  sacred  in 
the  same  manner,  for  this  particular  use.f  And  the 
blood  he  is  to  sprinkle  on  the  mercy -seat,  and  the  altar, 
and  the  tabernacle  of  the  congregation,  is  made  sacred, 
as  was  just  now  observed,  by  a  fixed  separation,  under 
the  same  penalty,  from  all  common  uses ;  because  it  has  in 
it  the  sacred  mystery  of  life.  The  offerings  too,  the 
bullock  that  is  offered  for  the  priest,  and  the  goat  that 
is  offered  for  the  people,  are  permitted,  in  no  part,  to  be 
eaten,  as  in  the  ordinary  and  more  festive  celebrations ; 
but  are  to  be  carried  outside  of  the  camp,  or  city,  and 

*  Exodus  xxx,  30-33.  f  Exodus  xxx,  34-38. 


512  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IV 

there  to  be  wholly  burned ;  because  they  are  supposed 
to  bear  the  taint  of  the  sin  upon  them.  And  to  make 
the  impression  more  complete,  that  the  sin  is  taken 
away,  the  men  who  carry  out  the  offerings  to  burn 
them,  come  back,  as  unclean,  publicly  washing  them '' 
selves  for  their  cleansing.  And,  to  make  the  removing 
of  the  sin  more  impressive,  it  is  dramatically  represent- 
ed, by  the  introduction  of  another  goat  beside  the  one 
that  is  offered,  on  the  head  of  which  the  priest  is  to 
confess  and  representatively  place  all  the  sins  of  the 
people,  and  which  is  to  be  driven  out  alive,  bearing 
"on  him  all  their  iniquities,  into  a  land  not  inhabited." 
And  then,  as  the  man  who  drove  out  the  goat,  having 
such  uncleanness  upon  him,  must  be  supposed  to  have 
suffered  defilement  in  consequence,  he  is  to  return  and 
wash  himself,  in  token  of  his  cleansing. 

And  the  conclusion  of  all  is,  not  that  certain  penal- 
ties for  sin  are  satisfied,  or  removed  by  expiation,  but 
that  the  sin  itself  is  covered,  or  taken  away.  "  For  on 
that  day  shall  the  priest  make  an  atonement  for  you,  to 
cleanse  you,  that  ye  may  be  clean  from  all  your  sins 
before  the  Lord." 

I  do  not,  of  course,  affirm  that  every  worshiper  con- 
cerned in  the  rites  of  the  day  is  ipso  facto  justified, 
born  of  God.  In  all  such  rites  of  the  altar,  two  re- 
sults are  concerned,  going  along,  or  designed  to  go, 
together,  but  under  very  different  conditions.  First 
there  is  to  be  a  ceremonial  cleansing,  which  is  wrought 
absolutely,  every  person  concerned  being  made  ceremo- 
nially clean.  And  secondly,  there  is  or  is  designed  to 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  513 

be,  a  moral  and  spiritual  cleansing,  wrought  implicitly, 
or  transactionally ;  every  thing  as  regards  exercise  and 
impression  being  adjusted  to  favor,  and  make  it  the 
privilege  of  the  worshiper,  if  only  he,  on  his  part,  will 
offer  his  heart  to  it.  If  he  takes  the  sense  of  his  un- 
cleanness  with  a  true  feeling,  if  he  is  so  cast  down  by 
it  that  he  wants  to  comfort  himself  in  seeing  all  most 
sacred  things  offered  for  his  sin ;  if  he  truly  believes 
that  God,  in  the  holy  of  holies,  receives  him,  and  that 
what  the  scape-goat  signifies  is  a  confidence  truly  given 
him ;  then  he  is  more  than  ceremonially  clean ;  the 
seeds  of  a  better  life  are  quickened  in  his  heart.  And 
this  is  what  the  promise  signifies ;  it  speaks  of  a  privi- 
lege given,  not  of  a  fact  accomplished, — "  that  ye  may 
be  clean  from  all  your  sins  before  the  Lord." 

There  is  then  I  conclude,  for  that  is  the  result  to 
which  we  are  brought  by  this  very  careful  inquiry,  no 
such  thing  as  expiation  in  the  sacrifices 

Kesult,  how 

of  the  Old  Testament  religion.  And  I  honorable  to  the 
hardly  need  say  how  great  a  satisfaction  Hebrcw  Scrip- 
it  is,  and  what  strength  it  contributes  to 
the  evidences  of  this  ancient,  or  ante-christian  dispen- 
sation of  God,  to  find  that  it  is  clear  of  a  notion  so  ab- 
horrent to  all  right  feeling,  and  so  essentially  dishonor- 
able to  God.  And  the  discovery  is  the  more  satisfacto- 
ry, that  it  puts  so  wide  a  gulf  of  distance  between  this 
ancient,  divine  institute,  and  the  crudities  of  barbarism 
and  superstition  that  infest  the  sacrifices  of  all  the  con- 
temporary and  even  subsequently  developed  religions 
of  paganism ;  proving,  at  once,  the  immense  superiority 


514:  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IV. 

it  has  to  all  such  growths  of  superstition,  and  establish- 
ing, as  it  were  bj  incontrovertible  evidence,  its  essen- 
tially divine  origin. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary,  after  this  extended  exposi- 
tion of  the  Old  Testament  sacrifices,  to  show,  by  a  dis- 
NO  expiation,  of   tinct  argument,  that  there  is  no  such 
course,  in  the  sac-   thing  as  expiation,  in  the  proper  and  de- 

rifice  of  Christ.          fined  genge  Qf  ^  ^^  ^  ^  gacrifice  of 

Christ.  Only  two  or  three  passages  occur  to  me  in  the 
New  Testament,  that  even  appear  to  allow  such  a  con- 
struction, without  a  look  of  violence.  Thus  when  Caia- 
phas  *  "  thought  it  expedient  that  one  should  die  for  the 
people,"  and  so  "  prophesied  "  verbally,  without  inspira- 
tion, I  think  it  likely  that  he  was  contriving  how  the 
murder  of  Christ,  in  the  pious  pretext  of  an  expiation 
for  the  people,  was  altogether  expedient ;  and  probably 
enough  too,  he  believed  in  expiations  ;  but  it  does  not 
follow  that  he  would  be  a  reliable  teacher  of  Christian 
doctrine.  The  conception  of  Paulf  that  "Christ  is 
made  a  curse  for  us,"  is  cited  often  as  a  text  for  expia- 
tion. But  the  meaning  is  exhausted,  when  he  is  con- 
ceived to  simply  come  into  the  corporate  state  of  evil, 
and  bear  it  with  us — faithful  unto  death  for  our  recov- 
ery. The  text  most  commonly  cited  as  a  conclusive 
and  indubitable  assertion  of  expiation,  is  that  which 
was  just  now  referred  to — "for  without  shedding  of 
blood  there  is  no  remission."^  As  if  the  word  "  blood  " 
were  to  be  taken  with  all  our  uncircumcised  associations 
of  murder  and  death  and  terror  upon  it,  not  as  a  life- 

*  John  xi,  50.  f  Galatians  iii,  13.  J:  Heb.  ix,  22. 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  515 

giving  and  restoring  word ;  and  as  if  the  word  "  remis- 
sion "  were  to  have  our  lightest,  most  superficial,  merely 
human  meaning  of  a  letting  go  ;  when  we  know  that, 
in  order  to  really  mean  any  thing  in  religion,  it  must 
signify  an  executed  remission,  an  inward,  spiritual  re- 
lease or  cleansing.  Suppose  then  that  our  great  apostle 
had  said,  what  to  him  signifies  exactly  the  same  thing, 
"  for  without  the  life-renewing  blood  there  is  no  cleans- 
ing for  sin."  It  is  difficult  to  speak  with  due  patience 
of  this  unhappy  text,  so  long  compelled  to  grind  in 
the  mill  of  expiation ;  turning  out,  always,  in  the  slow 
rotation  of  centuries,  this  creak  of  harsh  announcement, 
that  God  must  have  some  bloody  satisfaction,  else  he 
can  not  let  transgression  go  ! 

Sometimes  it  is  imagined,  that  there  is  a  peculiar  and 
most  sacred  impression  of  God  and  his  law  made  upon 
us,  by  the  assertion  of  expiation,  or  pe- 

J   .  The  supposed 

nal  satisfaction  ;  as  for  example,  in  this  effects  of  expiation 
text.  There  stands,  it  is  said,  the  inex-  rem.a^  without 
orable,  awe-inspiring  fidelity  of  God,  and 
the  conscience-piercing  word  that  tells  of  the  immova- 
ble necessity  by  which  he  is  holden,  wakens  an  im- 
pression of  too  great  power  and  benefit  to  be  willingly 
lost.  A  theologic  friend,  whose  opinions  I  much  re- 
spect, can  not  break  loose  from  the  dogma  of  expiation, 
or  penal  satisfaction,  though  it  confessedly  infringes 
somewhat  on  his  rational  convictions  and  even  his 
moral  sentiments,  because  he  imagines,  in  the  impres- 
sion just  referred  to,  that  it  must  have  some  transcen- 
dental virtue,  which,  without  knowing  exactly  whence 


516  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IY. 

it  comes,  or  how  it  works,  proves  it  to  be  from  God. 
Now  there  certainly  is  an  impression  of  great  value 
made  upon  us  by  this  same  text,  and  it  is  the  deeper, 
both  for  the  conscience  and  the  heart,  when  it  is  taken 
with  no  moral  offense  of  expiation,  or  penal  satisfac- 
tion, included.  And  yet  the  reference  of  it  to  God's 
inexorable  fidelity,  and  the  sense  of  an  immovable  ne- 
cessity by  which  he  is  holden,  is  here  made  good  as  be- 
fore. Here  stands,  fast  by  God's  throne,  the  everlasting 
must,  commanding  even  righteousness  to  suffer,  that 
justifying  grace  may  have  its  way.  For  there  comes 
out  here,  in  grand,  appalling  mystery,  the  immovable  ne- 
cessity and  everlasting  fact,  that  goodness  in  all  moral 
natures  has  a  doom  of  bleeding  on  it,  allowing  it  to  con- 
quer only  as  it  bleeds.  We  can  not  even  contrive  a  way 
for  it  to  be,  in  this  or  any  other  universe,  without  hav- 
ing pains  to  suffer  and  deaths  to  undergo.  Why,  the 
simple  thought  of  ascending  into  good,  puts  us,  forth- 
with, in  a  condition  of  great  cost,  and  if  we  should 
come  off  without  the  shedding  of  blood,  that  will  at 
least  be  a  good  type  of  what  we  are  required  to  suffer. 
Our  hatred  of  sin  is  a  pain,  our  struggle  with  it  painful 
every  way.  Pity  is  itself  a  pain,  beneficence  for  pity's 
sake  a  state  of  war.  If  we  give  ourselves  to  truth, 
truth  is  unpopular,  and  we  may  have  to  die  for  it. 
Good  in  no  shape,  whether  of  love  or  mercy,  can 
press  upon  evil,  without  being  maligned,  or  conspired 
against ;  and  it  is  well  if  the  evil  is  not  exasperated, 
even  up  to  the  point  of  phrensy  and  bloody  violence. 
Good  laws  and  liberties  cost  blood.  Slavery  is  vanquish- 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  .  517 

ed  and  wild  rebellion  crushed,  only  by  what  years  of 
suffering,  and  how  many  blood-sodden  fields  of  conflict. 
The  inexorable  law  is  upon  us — "And  without  shed- 
ding of  blood  there  is  no  remission."  All  good  con- 
quers by  a  cross,  and  without  a  cross  it  is  nothing. 
Ascending  hence  to  God,  we  go  not  above  this  doom, 
this  inexorable  law,  but  simply  go  up  to  the  point 
where  it  culminates,  and  whence  it  begins.  The  eter- 
nal righteousness  of  God  has  in  it  this  inherent  doom 
of  war.  It  must  suffer,  it  must  bleed,  and  only  so  can 
reign.  The  cross  is  in  it,  even  before  the  foundation  of 
the  world.  We  have,  in  our  theodicy,  all  manner  of 
ingenious  showings,  but  the  short  account  of  God's 
great  way  and  work  is,  that  goodness  and  right  must 
propagate  goodness  and  right ;  and  must  therefore  cre- 
ate souls  capable  of  goodness  and  right;  which  also, 
being  capable  of  badness  and  wrong, 


cre- 

also'    -W 

will  infallibly 
tis  is  evil — evil 

\   <    f*7l 


propagate  badness  and  wrong.  And  this 
to  be  mastered,  cleansed,  forgiven.  Evil  therefore  low- 
ers over  the  eternal  possibilities  of  God,  and  God  is 
linked,  in  that  manner,  by  a  prior,  unalterable  necessity 
to  conflict  and  suffering ;  so  that  if  the  good  that  is  in 
him  will  get  into  men's  bosoms,  it  must  bleed  into 
them.  "Ought  not  Christ  to  suffer?"  "For  it  became 
him,  [it  was  even  a  fixed  necessity  upon  him,]  for 
whom  are  all  things,  and  by  whom  are  all  things,  in 
bringing  many  sons  unto  glory,  to  make  the  captain  of 
their  salvation  perfect  through  sufferings."  And  so  re- 
turns upon  us,  still  again,  the  same  great  text  of  expia- 
tion— "  and  without  shedding  of  blood  there  is  no  re- 


518  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PABT  IV. 

mission" — returns  with  a  face  wholly  turned  away 
from  expiation,  and  yet  with  no  abatement  of  the 
power.  What,  in  fact,  can  be  more  impressive,  than 
the  inherently  tragic  fidelity  of  good — that  which,  at 
the  summit  of  omnipotence,  will  not  swerve  from  being 
confronted  with  evil,  and  suffering  for  it,  and  bleeding 

to  cleanse  it? 

, 

We  are  brought  on  thus,  finally,  to  the  conclusion, 

that  expiation  is  no  Christian  idea,  and  is  not  contained 

in  the  Christian  Scriptures.     Excluding 

Atonement 

resumed  and  it. then,  as  a  false  third  meaning  given  to 
shown  to  be  at-  the  Hebrew  word  cover,  we  return  to  the 

one-ment.  . 

two  others,  assigned  for  it  in  our  English 
translation,  atonement  and  propitiation,  and  resume  the 
discussion  of  these,  at  the  point  where  we  left  them,  in 
the  beginning  of  the  chapter. 

To  atone,  or  make  atonement  then,  is  to  remove 
transgression  itself,  or  reconcile  the  transgressor.  It 
fulfills,  in  a  figure,  the  original  physical  sense  of  the 
word  to  cover ;  as  when,  for  example,  the  ark  was  cov- 
ered with  pitch.  It  is  such  a  working  on  the  bad  mind 
of  sin  as  at-ones  it,  reconciles  it  to  God,  covers  up  and 
hides  forever  the  wrong  of  transgression,  assures  and 
justifies  the  transgressor.  In  one  word,  constantly  ap- 
plied to  it  in  the  atonements  of  the  old  ritual,  it  makes 
clean.  The  effect  is  wholly  subjective,  being  a  change 
wrought  in  all  the  principles  of  life  and  characters  and 
dispositions  of  the  soul. 

A  passage  from  the  Epistle  to  the  Komans  *  is  some- 

*  Rom.  T,  10. 


CHAP.  II.  AND    EXPIATION.  519 

times  cited  in  support  of  a  different  conclusion — "  For, 
if,  when  we  were  enemies,  we  were  reconciled  to  God 
by  the  death  of  his  Son,  much  more  being  reconciled 
shall  we  be  saved  by  his  life."  This  reconciliation  de- 
notes simply  a  change  of  condition,  it  is  said,  not  of 
character ;  a  being  brought  upon  the  new  footing  of 
pardon ;  for  it  is  something  accomplished  "  when  we 
were  enemies."  The  reconciliation  therefore  signifies 
the  placation  of  God,  and  not  our  restoration  to  God. 
What  then  remains,  following  the  same  style  of  argu- 
ment, under  the  conditions  of  time,  but  to  infer  that  our 
salvation  by  Christ  is  to  be  accomplished  wholly  by  his 
life ;  that  is,  by  his  second  life,  after  the  resurrection  ? 
Whereas,  if  we  can  take  a  more  dignified  way  of  con- 
struction, we  shall  understand  the  apostle  to  be  only 
raising  an  argument  of  degrees,  for  the  confidence  of  our 
complete  salvation — For  if  when  we  were  yet  enemies 
God  undertook  our  reconciliation  by  the  death  of  his 
Son,  much  more,  being  now  reconciled,  will  he  stand  by 
us,  since  he  lives  again  to  finish  the  salvation  begun. 

Atonement  then,  as  applied  to  Christ,  is  just  what  ia 
figured  so  carefully  in  the  atonement  of  the  ancient  sac- 
rifice. For  as  every  thing  about  the  temple  was  recon- 
secrated and  made  clean,  by  the  sacred  things  offered  in 
the  sacrifice — the  sacred  incense  burned  before  the  mercy- 
seat,  and  the  sacred  blood  sprinkled  on  whatever  had 
taken  the  defilement  of  our  sin — so  the  sprinkling  of 
the  far  more  sacred  blood  of  Jesus,  dying  as  the  Lamb 
of  God,  in  the  volunteer  obedience  of  his  vicarious  sac- 
rifice, reconsecrates  the  law  broken  by  our  sin,  dishon- 


520  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,       PART  IV. 

ored  and  defiled  by  our  defilement,  and  by  its  life-touch 
in  our  feeling  and  faith,  purges  our  consciousness  frora 
dead  works,  to  serve  the  living  God.  And  as  the  old 
sacrifice  made  a  remembrance  of  sins  every  year,  and 
opened  a  way,  once  a  year,  into  the  holy  of  holies,  so 
Christ,  by  an  offering  once  for  all,  has  made  a  reconcili- 
ation that  is  perfect  and  complete ;  so  that  we  may  all, 
as  being  now  made  priests  unto  God  and  ourselves,  en- 
ter at  all  times  and  with  boldness,  into  the  holiest,  by 
the  blood  of  Jesus.  That  altar  blood,  or  sprinkling, 
purified  the  patterns  of  the  heavenly  things ;  this  other, 
holier  sprinkling,  the  heavenly  things  themselves ;  viz., 
God's  throne,  law,  and  truth — every  thing  defiled  by 
our  transgressions — and  also  our  transgressions  them- 
selves. 

The  true  Christian  idea  of  propitiation  is  not  far 
hence.  The  pagan  color  of  the  word  is  taken  off; 
Propitiation  and  there  is  no  such  thought  as  that  God  is 
prevailing  prayer.  placated  or  satisfied,  by  the  expiatory 
pains  offered  him.  It  supposes,  first,  a  subjective  aton- 
ing, or  reconciliation  in  us ;  and  then,  as  a  farther  re- 
sult, that  God  is  objectively  propitiated,  or  set  in  a  new 
relation  of  welcome  and  peace.  Before  he  could  not 
embrace  us,  even  in  his  love.  His  love  was  the  love 
of  compassion ;  now  it  is  the  love  of  complacency  and 
permitted  friendship.  This  objective  propitiation  of 
God  answers  exactly  to  another  objective  conception, 
commonly  held  without  any  thought  of  correspondence. 
Thus  we  have  a  way  of  saying,  as  regards  successful 
prayer,  that  it  prevails  with  God.  Is  it  then  our  mean- 


CHAP.  H.  AND    EXPIATION.  521 

ing  that  it  turns  God's  mind,  makes  him  better,  more 
favorable,  more  inclined  to  bestow  the  things  we  seek  ? 
Probably  enough  many  persons  think  so,  and  it  is  much 
better  that  they  should,  than  to  conclude,  with  many 
others,  that  it  accomplishes  nothing ;  obtaining  no  gifts 
that  would  not  have  been  given  as  certainly  without 
any  prayer  at  all.  But  the  true  conception  is  this — 
that  God  has  instituted  an  economy  of  prayer  to  work 
on  Christian  souls  and  brotherhoods  and  churches,  en- 
couraging them  to  come  and  make  suit  to  him,  for  the 
blessings  they  need.  This  draws  them  nearer  to  him 
than  before,  chastens  their  spirit,  kindles  their  holy  de- 
sires and  aspirations,  unites  them  to  aims  of  mercy  like 
his  own,  brings  them  into  a  more  complete  faith,  bands 
them  together,  two,  or  three,  or  many,  in  a  more  living 
fellowship  of  heart ;  and  so,  having  gotten  them,  by  this 
economy,  into  a  state  more  configured  to  himself — which 
is  the  very  object  for  which  he  orders  the  world — he  is 
now  able  to  grant,  or  dispense,  things  which  before  he 
could  not,  and  he  is  prevailed  with.  Is  he  then  better 
than  before  ?  is  he  induced  to  alter  his  plans ?  No,  by 
no  means.  But  he  has  now  new  subjects,  or  subjects 
in  a  new  relationship,  and  if  he  were  now  to  carry  on 
all  the  courses  of  events,  just  as  if  the  prayers  were  not, 
he  would  even  violate  a  first  principle  of  nature,  that 
every  event  shall  have  its  own  consequences.  Prayers 
are  events  like  all  others,  and  what  forbids  that,  having 
their  consequences,  the  consequences  should  be  answers? 
God  then  is  propitiated  by  a  change  of  relationship, 
that  permits  him  to  greet  the  souls  whom  Christ  has 

44* 


522  ATONEMENT,    PROPITIATION,        PART  IT. 

reconciled,  in  cordial  welcome,  as  he  otherwise  could 

not  —  just  as  he  is  prevailed  with  in  prayers,  that  are 

new  conditions  prepared  for  new  bless- 

Objective  pro- 

pitiation supposes   ings.     And  that  this  is  the  true  concep- 

subjectivo  faith.         ^   ^   ^^   effectually   gh()wn    by    ^ 

standard  text  itself,  in  that  particular  clause  which  was 
reserved  to  this  point  of  the  argument*  —  "Whom  God 
hath  set  forth  to  be  a  propitiation,  through  faith  in  his 
blood."  The  apostle  does  not  say,  it  will  be  observed 
—  "  propitiation  through  his  blood  "  —  as  the  scheme  of 
expiation  requires,  but  "  propitiation  through  faith  in  his 
blood."  No  propitiation  therefore  reaches  the  mark, 
that  does  not,  on  its  way,  reconcile,  or  bring  into  faith, 
the  subject  for  whom  it  is  made.  There  is  no  God- 
welcome  prepared,  which  does  not  open  the  guilty 
heart  to  welcome  God. 

The  apostle,  in  this  manner,  takes  away  from  the 
Greek  word  he  uses,  which  it  must  be  confessed  is 
commonly  used  by  the  pagan  writers  in  a  way  that 
implies  expiation,  any  possibility  of  such  a  meaning  ; 
for  they  have  never  a  thought  of  any  such  thing  as  an 
expiation  through  faith;  and,  what  is  more,  expiation 
itself  excludes  the  supposition,  that  any  kind  of  moral 
condition  is  necessary  in  the  subject  for  whom  it  is 
offered  ;  the  very  idea  being,  that  it  avails,  as  being  a 
contribution  of  evils  to  obtain  the  release  of  evils  ;  not 
as  having  now  a  state  of  faith  prepared,  as  a  new  recep- 
tivity for  good.  I  know  not  how  often  this  language 
of  the  apostle  is  quoted,  as  if  it  asserted  a  propitiation 

Rom.  Hi,  28. 


XoK,       . 

-ftr^  QrtL  L<r>^Lu(.  t 

.        fsfS^} 


CHAP.  IL  AND    EXPIATION.  523 

that  is  accomplished  before  faith,  and  wholly  apart  from 
faith ;  a  placation  of  God  that  has  respect  to  no  human 
conditions  whatever — precisely  that  which  he  carefully 
and  even  formally  excludes. 

Atonement  then  is  a  change  wrought  in  us,  a  change 
by  which  we  are  reconciled  to  God.  Propitiation  is  an 
objective  conception,  by  which  that  change,  taking 
place  in  us,  is  spoken  of  as  occurring  representatively  in 
God.  Just  as  guilty  minds,  thrown  off  from  God,  glass 
their  feeling  representatively  in  God,  imagining  that 
God  is  thrown  off  from  them;  or  just  as  we  say  that 
the  sun  rises,  instead  of  saying,  what  would  be  so  very 
awkward  to  us,  and  yet  is  the  real  truth,  that  we  our- 
selves rise  to  the  sun.  The  necessity  and  uses  of  this 
objective  language  will  be  considered  more  at  large,  in 
the  remaining  chapter,  and  therefore  need  not  be  in- 
sisted on  here,  as  in  reference  to  the  single  word  pro- 
pitiation. 


*=•?* 


i*+ 


__(*>-  *~"~~~*  "-  —V 

. 


CHAPTER  III. 

PKACTICAL  USES  AND  WAYS  OF  PREACHING. 

AFTER  we  have  gone  over  the  whole  ground  of  the 
gospel  as  a  work  of  vicarious  sacrifice,  settled  the  doc- 
trine, found  the  meaning  of  the  Scripture  symbols,  there 
still  remain  some  very  important  practical  questions  re- 
specting the  modes  of  preaching  and  use.  Neither  can 
these  questions  be  dispatched,  by  what  may  seem  to  be 
the  ready  and  simple  conclusion,  that  we  are  to  preach 
and  apply  to  our  own  lives  just  what  we  have  found  to 
be  true,  neither  more  nor  less.  For  to  preach  what  is 
true  concerning  a  matter,  and  to  preach  the  matter  itself, 
Truth  concern-  ™y  be  very  different  things.  So  if  we 
ing  Christ  not  speak  of  use,  or  application  to  our  own 
spiritual  state,  we  may  only  fool  our- 
selves in  the  endeavor  to  get  our  benefit  out  of  what  is 
true  concerning  the  gospel,  when  all  true  benefit  lies  in 
a  right  appropriation  of  the  gospel  itself.  As  concern- 
ing Christ,  we  have  made  up  our  account  of  his  work, 
in  the  conclusion  that  he  is  in  the  world  to  be  the  moral 
power  of  God  upon  it ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  we 
shall  preach  him,  or  receive  him,  in  the  most  effectual 
wa7)  by  contriving  always  how  to  be  in  the  power,  and 
muster  the  power  upon  us.  His  truth  may  be  most 


CHAP.  in.  PRACTICAL    USES,    ETC.  525 

powerful,  when  we  think  least  of  the  power,  and  have 
our  mind  wholly  turned  away,  in  love  and  trust,  from 
ourselves.  If  I  have  a  much  honored  and  powerful 
friend,  by  whose  great  character  I  would  like  to  model 
my  own,  I  shall  not  do  it  probably  by  contriving  al- 
ways, artificially  and  consciously,  how  to  get  his  effi- 
cacy upon  me ;  but  I  shall  be  much  with  him,  and  put- 
ting faith  in  him,  I  shall  breathe  the  atmosphere  he 
makes,  even  as  I  do  the  air  without  contriving  how  to 
live  by  it ;  I  shall  admire  his  sentiments  and  his  bear- 
ing in  great  crises  of  trial ;  I  shall  find  a  pleasure  in 
meeting  his  wishes,  and  doing  what  I  may,  to  advance 
the  cause  that  engages  him.  Thinking  nothing  thus  of 
getting  a  power  upon  me  from  his  person,  I  shall  be 
only  the  more  completely  pervaded  and  molded  by  his 
power.  A  glance  in  this  direction  is  sufficient  to  show, 
that  the  preaching  and  personal  uses  of  the  gospel  are 
a  subject  widely  distinct  from  the  truth  concerning  it. 

The  gospel  will  of  course  be  preached  and  applied  to 
use  in  modes  that  have  some  agreement  with  what  it  is 
conceived  to  be.  Thus  if  Christ  be  ac-  various  kinds  of 
cepted  only  as  a  great  moral  teacher  preaching. 
and  reformer,  the  preaching  over  of  his  preaching,  as 
recorded  in  the  four  gospels,  will  be  the  main  thing, 
and  almost  nothing  will  be  made  of  his  personal  life 
and  death,  and  the  reconciling  purpose  of  his  mission. 
Preaching  will  be  teaching  as  the  Master  taught,  even 
as  the  pupils  of  the  Academy,  the  Porch,  or  the  Peripa- 
tetic order,  followed  the  school  of  their  master.  The 
after  developments  of  his  mission  and  the  significance 


526  PRACTICAL    USES  PART  IV. 

of  it,  as  completed  by  the  cross,  and  opened  by  the  Holy 
Spirit — just  that  which  the  apostles  received  and  pub- 
lished, when  they  preached  him  as  the  Saviour  of  sin- 
ners— will  be  virtually  ignored.  Precisely  what  made 
the  day  of  pentecost  will  be  omitted. 

If  the  gospel  is  conceived  to  be  merely  an  array  of 
legal  motives  addressed  to  interest,  and  so  contrived  as 
to  cast  a  preponderating  balance  always  on  the  side  of 
right  choices,  then  there  will  be  cogent  appeals  to  the 
conscience,  and  the  fears,  and  the  love  of  happiness, 
and  so  to  the  will-power  of  the  subjects  addressed. 
And  then,  for  such  as  choose  rightly,  Christ  will  be 
shown  to  have  prepared  a  ground  of  forgiveness ;  and 
beyond  that  as  the  principal  account  of  his  mission,  will 
be  conceived  to  have  no  particular  agency  in  the  trans- 
formations to  be  wrought.  This  kind  of  preaching  will 
take  on  a  strenuous  air,  and  will  sometimes  stir  great 
commotions  where  only  motions  would  be  better.  The 
piety  thus  resulting  will  be  legal ;  a  kind  of  will-work, 
too  little  freshened  by  the  graceful  affections,  too  little 
enriched  by  great  sentiments,  lifted  by  no  inspirations, 
save  when  slipping,  by  chance,  the  legal  detentions,  it- 
seizes  the  forbidden  fruit  of  liberty. 

Another  characteristic  mode  of  preaching  is  produced 
by  preaching  a  formula,  supposed  to  be  the  very  equiv- 
alent and  substantial  import  of  the  gospel.  And  we 
have  abundance  of  complaints,  from  such  as  mean  to 
be  faithful  in  this  way,  that  Christ  is  now  so  little 
preached.  They  mean  that  Christ  is  not  preached  as 
an  expiation,  or  a  satisfaction  to  God's  justice,  or  an 


CHAP.  III.       AND    WAYS    OF    PREACHING.  527 

exposition  of  God?s  abhorrence  to  sin.  The  substance 
of  their  complaint  is  really  that  a  formula  is  not 
preached  instead  of  Christ ;  that,  too,  a  formula  so  pain- 
fully untrue  as  to  make  itself  felt  more  often  as  a  viola- 
tion of  natural  feeling,  than  as  a  saving  power  upon  it. 
If  only  this  be  preaching  Christ,  it  will  be  a  long  time 
before  he  is  preached  in  a  way  to  satisfy  this  kind  of 
complaint. 

The  very  idea  of  preaching  Christ  by  formula,  even 
if  the  true  formula  were  developed,  is  a  great  mistake ; 
for  whatever  mind  goes  into  limitation  or  Incrustation 
under  formula  becomes  sterile,  .and  the  gospel  on  which 
it  perpetually  hammers  will  be  meager,  and  weak,  and 
dry.  All  the  ten  thousand  flaming  truths  that  are 
crowding  in,  as  troops  of  glory,  on  the  thoughts  of  a 
soul  in  liberty,  asking  as  it  were  to  be  uttered  faster 
than  the  Sundays  will  let  them,  are  suppressed,  or  shut 
back,  by  that  inevitable  little  sentence  of  wisdom,  which 
has  concluded  every  thing.  I  will  not  deny  that  some 
general  account  or  scheme  of  the  gospel  plan  may  be 
convenient,  for  the  mind  to  fall  back  upon  and  gather 
itself  into,  for  the  minting  and  due  authentication  of  its 
issues.  But  a  formula  to  be  preached,  and  maintained 
as  a  gospel,  is  a  very  different  matter — all  the  worse,  if 
it  has  only  been  received  pedagogically,  and  been  set 
as  the  hand-organ  tune  which  the  school  is  engaged  to 
play.  Any  formula  is  a  necessary  abortion,  which  is 
not  the  formulization  of  Christ  discovered  by  the  heart, 
and  verified  by  a  deep  working  Christian  experience. 

Let  us  see  if  we  can  arrive  at  some  better  and  more 


528  PRACTICAL    USES  PABTlV. 

adequate  conception  of  preaching.  Christ  is  here,  ac- 
cording to  the  doctrine  of  this  treatise,  to  be  the  moral 
The  true  kind  power  of  God  on  the  world,  so  the  power 
described.  of  Qo&  Unto  salvation.  But  if  any  one 
should  set  himself  to  preaching  only  this,  turning  it 
round  and  round,  citing  texts  for  it,  and  arguing  down 
objections,  he  would  only  postpone  the  power  he  under- 
takes to  assert.  Christ  will  be  the  power,  only  as  he  is 
himself  in  that  which  makes  him  the  power ;  viz.,  all 
that  he  was,  did,  and  expressed,  in  his  life  and  death 
and  resurrection — Saviour  of  sinners  and  Judge  of  the 
world.  We  have  seen  him,  for  example,  fulfilling  the 
love  principle  in  vicarious  suffering  for  us ;  revealing, 
in  his  obedience,  God's  everlasting  obedience  to  law; 
adding  vigor  to  law  by  his  tremendous  enforcements ; 
doing  honor  to  God's  retributive  justice,  by  subjecting 
himseif  to  all  the  corporate  evils  it  brings  on  the  human 
state ;  and  by  all  these  methods,  declaring  so  impress- 
ively the  righteousness  of  God,  as  to  prepare  the  glori- 
ous possibility  and  fact  of  a  free  justification — these  are 
all  great  truths  for  preaching,  greater  each  of  them  singly 
in  its  power,  than  the  general  truth  which  includes  them 
all ;  and  yet  when  these  again  are  subdivided,  and  run 
out  into  all  the  thousand  facts  and  subjects  included, 
they  will  ring  even  the  more  impressively  in  each  one, 
because  it  is  farther  off  from  what  is  general  and  closer 
to  the  concrete  matter  of  Christ's  personal  life.  The 
subjects  are  endless,  and  the  power  inexhaustible. 

I  think  we  shall  best  conceive  the  subject  matter  of 
preaching  and  in  that  sense  the  mode,  if  we  specify  three 


CHAP.  III.       AND    WAYS    OF    PREACHING.  529 

distinct  elements  which  must  be  included,  and  are  nec- 
essary to  the  genuine  power. 

1.  There  must  be  a  descent  to  human  nature  in  its 
lower  plane  of  self-love  and  interested  motive,  and  a  be- 
ginning made  with  the  conscience,  the  God,g  law  and 
fears,  and  the  boding  expectations  of  justice  to  be 
guiltiness.  To  convince,  intimidate,  wa-  pre 
ken  out  of  stupor,  shake  defiant  wrong  out  of  its  confi- 
dences, must  be  deliberately  undertaken  and,  if  possible, 
effectively  done.  There  must  be  no  delicacy  here ;  as  if 
God's  love  and  the  vicarious  ministry  of  Jesus  were  too 
softly  good,  to  do  any  so  rugged  and  severe  thing  as  to 
punish.  Christ's  own  doctrine  of  future  punishment, 
Christ  as  the  judge  of  the  world,  all  that  belongs  to 
God's  law,  all  that  will  be  done  by  God's  justice,  the 
very  dies  irce  of  the  wrath  to  come,  must  be  faithfully 
declared,  and  that  in  a  manner  that  indicates  conviction. 
Of  course  there  must  be  no  violence,  under  pretext  of 
suffering  no  delicacy,  but  a  manner  of  tenderness  that 
indicates  due  sensibility  in  a  matter  so  appalling.  The 
>rue  conception  is,  that  as  God's  justice  is  a  co-factor 
with  his  mercy,  it  is  ^  be  set  forth  and  magnified  and 
made  real  in  the  same  way,  and  for  the  same  purpose. 
And  no  better  model  can  be  taken  for  this  than  Christ 
himself.  Nor  is  any  thing  more  certain,  than  that  who- 
ever gives  in  to  the  feeling  that  Christ  is  outgrown  in 
this  matter,  has  really  no  gospel  to  preach — his  vocation 
is  gone.  For  if  Christ  did  not  understand  himself  here, 
what  reason  is  there  to  believe  that  he  understood  him- 
self at  all  ?  In  this  dilemma  one  may  think  he  has  a 

45 


530  '     PRACTICAL    USES  PART  IT. 

gospel,  and  a  specially  superlative  kind  of  gospel,  but 
it  will  be  nerveless  and  without  sound ;  like  the  head- 
less drums  that  marching  children  sometimes  carry, 
beating  on  the  rim.  God  is  a  just  God,  and  if  he  is  not 
shown  to  be,  but  only  to  be  a  beautiful  God,  or  a  gentle 
and  loving  God,  sin  will  be  abundantly  reconciled  to 
him  staying  where  it  is.  There  is  no  salvation  here, 
and  no  power  of  salvation  is  wanted.  There  may  be  a 
dressing  of  the  soul  in  what  is  called  beauty  of  charac- 
ter, but  the  character  will  be  only  a  beautiful  affectation. 
But  we  pass  to  the  saving  side  of  the  gospel,  that  in 
which  the  personal  power  of  Christ's  sacrifice  is  spe- 
cially designed  to  operate.  And  here  we  shall  find — 

2.  That  a  very  great  and  principal  office  of  preaching 
will  consist  in  a  due  exhibition  of  the  Christian  facts. 

The  facts  of   ^e  Power  *s  to  ^e  personal,  and  will 
Christ's  life  to  therefore  lie  in  the  facts  of  the  personal 

be  magnified.         ^       ^^   f&^    tlierefore    are   pregmi. 

nently  the  good  news  that  composes  the  gospel ;  requir- 
ing heralds,  or  preachers  [precones,"]  to  go  abroad  and 
publish  it.  Apart  from  these  facts,  the  great  subjects 
we  have  spoken  of  are  nothing.  3?hey  spring  out  of  the 
facts  and  have  no  basis  of  reality  beside.  Hence  also 
it- is  that  in  the  Apostles'  creed,  or  first  recorded  con- 
fession of  Christ,  nothing  is  included  but  the  simple 
outline  facts  of  his  life ;  no  other  and  better  formula  be- 
ing yet  conceived  or  attempted.  Here  accordingly  is 
the  original  and  truly  grand  office  of  preaching;  viz.7 
in  the  setting  forth  and  fit  representation  of  these  gos- 
pel facts. 


CHAP.  III.       AND    WAYS    OF    PEEACHING.  531 

They  begin  with  the  grand  primal  fact  of  the  incar- 
nation ;  for  it  is  only  in  that,  and  by  that  mystery,  that 
the  person  arrives  whose  history  is  to  be  entered  into 
the  world.  Viewed  in  this  light,  the  person  arriving 
is  not  merely  a  man,  but,  as  we  must  believe,  a  verita- 
ble God-man.  Taken  as  being  simply  a  man,  the  facts 
of  his  life  would  certainly  be  remarkable  and  valuable ; 
he  would  only  be  a  much  greater  and  more  incredible 
mystery,  considering  the  morally  perfect,  and  therefore 
superhuman  character  he  is  in,  than  he  is  when  con- 
ceived as  an  abnormal,  extra-mundane  person,  let  into 
the  world  from  above  it,  to  fulfill  a  specially  divine 
mission.  All  the  after  facts  change  color  and  conse- 
quence, accordingly,  as  they  are  viewed  in  one  mode  or 
the  other.  Considered  as  the  God-man,  there  is  not  a 
single  fact,  or  scene,  in  the  history  which,  fitly  con- 
ceived, does  not  yield  some  lesson  of  power;  the  in- 
fancy ;  the  thirty  years  of  silent  preparation ;  the  recoil 
of  the  poor  human  nature,  called  the  temptation,  when 
the  work  begins ;  every  healing,  every  miracle,  every 
friendship,  every  commendation,  every  denunciation, 
the  lot  of  poverty,  the  hour  of  oppressed  feeling,  the 
weariness  and  sleep,  the  miraculous  hem  of  his  garment, 
the  transfiguration,  the  prayers,  the  amazing  assump- 
tions of  a  common  glory  and  right  with  the  Father,  the 
agony,  the  trial,  the  crucifixion,  the  resurrection,  the 
appearings  and  tender  teachings  afterwards,  and  last  of 
all  the  ascension,  followed  by  the  descent  of  the  Spirit 
to  represent  and  be  himself,  according  to  his  promise,  a 
Christ  every  where  present,  every  where  accessible — no 


532      .  PRACTICAL    USES  PART  IT. 

longer  limited  and  localized  in  space — in  all  these  and 
in  all  he  said  and  taught  concerning  God,  himself,  and 
us,  the  preacher  is  to  find  staple  matter  for  his  mes- 
sages. There  is  almost  nothing,  even  as  to  his  mere 
manners  and  modes,  which,  if  he  is  truly  alive — and  no 
Christian  man  has  a  right  to  be  dead — will  not  open 
some  gate  or  crevice  into  chambers  of  glory,  for  the 
conscience  or  the  heart. 

Here  has  been  one  of  the  great  faults  or  deficiencies 
in  the  preaching  of  Christ.     Too  little,  by  a  thousand 

A  reat  fault  of  ^o^»  •nas  ^een  made  of  the  facts  of  his 
preaching  has  "been  life.  By  some  they  are  almost  never 
dwelt  upon,  with  the  exception,  per- 
haps, of  two  or  three  that  could  not  be  utterly  passed 
over ;  the  rest  are  as  if  they  were  not.  Commonly  the 
feeling  is  not  brought  close  enough  to  them  to  find  the 
life  that  is  in  them — what  can  they  signify  of  import- 
ance, after  the  main  doctrine  of  all  has  been  decocted  ? 
How  much  easier  to  preach  the  decoction  and  let  the 
dried  herbs  of  the  story  go.  It  might  be  so,  if  they 
were  really  dry ;  but  since  they  are  all  alive,  fresh  and 
fragrant  as  a  bank  of  roses,  how  much  better  to  go  and 
breathe  among  them  and  catch  the  quickening  odors. 
How  little  indeed  does  any  preacher  know  of  the  true 
gospel,  who  only  finds  a  dull,  stale  matter,  in  the  won- 
derful, morally  sublime  record  of  such  a  character !  No 
good  news  will  ever  go  forth  out  of  him.  He  thinks  he 
has  exhausted  the  gospel  and  gotten  the  whole  matter 
of  it  in  his  head,  just  because  he  has  gotten  nothing, 
and  knows  not  that  there  is  any  thing  to  get,  besides 


CHAP.  III.       AND    WAYS    OF    PREACHING.  533 

what  his  formula  contains.  He  mourns  a  little,  it  may 
be,  over  the  want  of  power  in  his  preaching,  when  in 
fact  there  ought  to  be  no  power,  because  there  is  no 
fact  in  the  grand  life-history  of  Jesus  that  is  alive  to 
him.  He  fails  just  where  any  really  high  ministry 
must  begin ;  viz.,  in  the  ability  to  show  forth  Christ 
alive,  in  the  facts  that  represent  his  living  personality ; 
thus  to  raise  conviction,  thus  to  keep  interest  in  a  glow, 
thus  to  conquer  the  heart  and  testify  a  Saviour  who 
mediates  peace. 

I  think  it  would  be  hardly  possible  for  a  preacher  of 
Christ  to  be  too  much  in  the  facts  of  his  life.  Only 
they  must  be  so  handled  as  to  raise  great  subjects,  and 
kindle  the  heat  of  a  true  fire,  as  they  always  may.  The 
mere  doling  of  these  facts,  or  the  setting  them  off  in  a 
garnish  of  scene-painting  or  mock  sentiment,  or  frothy 
laudation,  does  not  fulfill  the  idea  of  such  preaching. 
Something  worthy  of  God's  love,  something  deifically 
great  must  be  found  in  them,  and  the  feeling  must  be 
raised,  that  he  is  personally  nigh,  rich  in  his  gifts, 
strong  in  his  majesty,  terrible  in  his  beauty,  heavy- 
hearted  and  tender  in  the  suffering  concern  of  his  love. 
We  come  next — 

3.  To  another  and  more  difficult  matter,  as  regards 
the  power  of  the  gospel  in  its  uses,  and  the  due  impres- 
sion of  it,  as  a  way  of  salvation;  viz.,  No8ufficienfcgos. 
the  right  conception  and  fit  presenta-  pel  without  the  ai- 
tion  of  it,  under  the  altar  forms  pro-  t 
vided  for  it.  For,  besides  the  outward  figure  of  the 
facts,  occurring  under  conditions  of  space  and  time,  and 

45* 


534  PRACTICAL    USES  PART  IT. 

significant  to  human  feeling  in  that  manner,  God  has 
contrived  a  thought-form,  to  assist  us  in  that  kind  of 
use  which  may  conduct  us  into  the  desired  state  of 
practical  reconciliation  with  himself.  In  the  facts,  out- 
wardly regarded,  there  is  no  sacrifice,  or  oblation,  or 
atonement,  or  propitiation,  but  simply  a  living  and  dy- 
ing thus  and  thus.  The  facts  are  impressive,  the  per- 
son is  clad  in  a  wonderful  dignity  and  beauty,  the 
agony  is  eloquent  of  love,  and  the  cross  a  very  shock- 
ing murder  triumphantly  met,  and  if  then  the  question 
rises,  how  we  are  to  use  such  a  history  so  as  to  be  rec- 
onciled by  it,  we  hardly  know  in  what  way  to  begin. 
How  shall  we  come  unto  God  by  help  of  this  martyr- 
dom ?  How  shall  we  turn  it,  or  turn  ourselves  under 
it,  so  as  to  be  justified  and  set  in  peace  with  God? 
Plainly  there  is  a  want  here,  and  this  want  is  met  by 
giving  a  thought-form  to  the  facts  which  is  not  in  the 
facts  themselves.  They  are  put  directly  into  the  molds 
of  the  altar,  and  we  are  called  to  accept  the  crucified 
God-man  as  our  sacrifice,  an  offering  or  oblation  for  us, 
our  propitiation ;  so  to  be  sprinkled  from  our  evil  con- 
science, washed,  purged,  purified,  cleansed  from  our  sin. 
Instead  of  leaving  the  matter  of  the  facts  just  as  they 
occurred,  there  is  a  reverting  to  familiar  forms  of 
thought,  made  familiar  partly  for  this  purpose,  and  we 
are  told,  in  brief,  to  use  the  facts  just  as  we  would  the 
sin  offerings  of  the  altar,  and  make  an  altar  grace  of 
them — only  a  grace  complete  and  perfect,  an  offering 
once  for  all.  According  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, 
the  ancient  ritual  was  devised  by  God,  apart  from  its 


CHAP.  in.       AND    WAYS    OF    PKEACHING.  535 

liturgical  uses,  to  be  the  vehicle  in  words  of  the  heav- 
enly things  in  Christ,  molds  of  thought  for  the  world's 
grand  altar  service  in  Christ  the  universal  offering,  reg- 
ulative conceptions  for  the  fit  receiving  and  effective 
use  of  the  gospel. 

And  so  much  is  there  in  this  that,  without  these 
forms  of  the  altar,  we  should  be  utterly  at  a  loss  in  mak- 
ing any  use  of  the  Christian  facts,  that  would  set  us  in 
a  condition  of  practical  reconciliation  with  God.  Christ 
is  good,  beautiful,  wonderful,  his  disinterested  love  is  a 
picture  by  itself,  his  forgiving  patience  melts  into  my 
feeling,  his  passion  rends  open  my  heart,  but  what  is 
he  for,  and  how  shall  he  be  made  unto  me  the  salvation 
I  want  ?  One  word — he  is  my  sacrifice — opens  all  to 
me  and  beholding  him,  with  all  my  sin  upon  him,  I 
count  him  my  offering,  I  come  unto  God  by  him  and 
enter  into  the  holiest  by  his  blood.  / 

But  the  principal  reason  for  setting  forth  the  matter 
of  Christ's  life  and  death  as  an  oblation  remains  to  be 
stated;  viz.,  the  necessity  of  somehow  Wanted  to  pro_ 
preventing  an  over-conscious  state  in  duce  an  attitude  of 
the  receiver.  It  was  going  to  be  a  objec 
great  fault  in  the  use,  that  the  disciple,  looking  for  a 
power  on  his  character,  would  keep  himself  too  entirely 
in  the  attitude  of  consciousness,  or  voluntary  self-appli- 
cation. He  would  be  hanging  round  each  fact  and 
scene,  to  get  some  eloquent  moving  effect  from  it.  And 
he  would  not  only  study  how  to  get  impressions,  but, 
almost  ere  he  is  aware  of  it,  to  make  them.  Just  here 
accordingly  it  was  that  the  Scripture  symbols,  and  es- 


536  PRACTICAL    USES  PART  IV. 

pecially  those  of  the  altar  service,  were  to  come  to  our 
aid,  putting  us  into  a  use  of  the  gospel  so  entirely  ob- 
jective, as  to  scarcely  suffer  a  recoil  on  our  conscious- 
ness at  all.  The  sacrificial  offering  was  in  form,  an  of- 
fering wholly  to  God,  even  as  the  smoke  rolls  up  from 
the  altar  and  comes  not  back.  The  result  was  that  the 
worshiper  was  made  clean;  that  is,  according  to  the 
political,  or  statutory  sense ;  and  if,  perchance,  he  was 
made  clean  in  a  deeper  sense,  it  would  be  implicitly, 
just  because  his  mind  was  going  up  wholly  to  God, 
with  the  smoke  of  his  offering.  So,  when  I  conceive 
that  Christ  is  my  offering  before  God,  my  own  choice 
Lamb  and  God's,  brought  to  the  slaying,  and  that  for 
my  sin,  my  thought  moves  wholly  outward  and  up- 
ward, bathing  itself  in  the  goodness  and  grace  of  the 
sacrifice.  Doubtless  there  will  be  a  power  in  it,  all  the 
greater  power  that  I  am  not  looking  after  power,  and 
that  nothing  puts  me  thinking  of  effects  upon  myself. 

In  this  manner  coming  unto  Christ,  or  to  God 
through  Christ,  in  the  symbols  of  sacrifice,  we  make  an 
escape,  as  it  were,  from  ourselves  and  that  state  of  con- 
sciousness which  is  the  bane  of  religion ;  an  escape,  I 
must  frankly  admit,  which  is  none  the  less  necessary, 
when  we  conceive  that  Christ  has  come  into  the  world, 
not  to  expiate  sin,  but  to  be  a  power  upon  it ;  further- 
more, an  escape  which  God  has  provided,  to  make  him 
more  completely  a  power.  For  it  is  in  these  symbols 
that  God  contrives  to  get  us  out  of  ourselves  into  the 
free  state  of  faith,  and  love,  and  to  become  the  new  in- 
spiration of  life  in  our  hearts.  And  accordingly  we 


CHAP.  m.       AND    WAYS    OF    PREACHING  537 

should  find,  in  the  ready  and  free  use  of  these  symbols, 
our  best  means  of  grace,  if  only  we  could  have  them 
clear  of  misconstructions  that  often  fatally  corrupt  their 
meaning.  Oppressed  with  guilt,  we  should  turn  our- 
selves joyfully  to  Christ  as  the  propitiation  for  our  sins, 
Christ  who  hath  borne  the  curse  for  us,  Christ  who 
knew  no  sin  made  sin  for  us,  that  we  might  be  made 
the  righteousness  of  God  in  him.  We  should  cry  in  our 
prayers ;  0  Lamb  of  God  that  takest  away  the  sins  of 
the  world,  take  away  our  sins ;  or  thinking  of  that  sa- 
cred blood,  by  whose  drops  that  fell  as  touches  of  life 
on  the  world's  grand  altar,  Calvary,  we  should  cry — 
wash  us,  0  Christ,  in  the  blood  of  thy  cross  and  make 
us  clean;  or  wanting,  in  despair  of  ourselves,  some 
Helper  and  Friend  to  bear  the  sins  we  can  not  bear  our- 
selves, we  should  take  up  tenderly  the  words  of  the 
poet,  if  not  in  his  meaning,  yet  in  the  meaning  which 
they  ought  to  have — 

"  My  soul  looks  back  to  see 

The  burdens  thou  didst  bear, 
When  hanging  on  the  accursed  tree, 
And  hopes  her  guilt  was  there." 

We  want,  in  short,  to  use  these  altar  terms,  just  as 
freely  as  they  are  used  by  those  who  accept  the  for- 
mula of  expiation,  or  judicial  satisfaction  for  sin;  in 
just  their  manner  too,  when  they  are  using  them  most 
practically.  Indeed,  it  is  one  of  the  enviable  advan- 
tages of  their  scheme  that  they  are  able  to  use  them 
freely ;  for,  when  they  are  so  used,  they  will  not  always 
keep  themselves  close  in  the  dogmatic  misconstructions 


538  PRACTICAL    USES  PART  IT. 

put  upon  them,  but  will  often  pour  into  the  heart,  in 
their  true  Scripture  meaning,  as  chariots  into  some  pos- 
tern gate  that  is  not  closed.  A  more  subjective  gospel, 
one  that  looks  to  effects  on  character  and  the  renewing 
of  the  life  in  God,  has  even  a  better  right  to  their  use ; 
and  they  are  almost  indispensable,  to  save  it  from  an 
otherwise  nearly  fatal  subjectivity. 

Nor  is  there  any  thing  so  peculiar  in  this  need  of  an 
objective  form  for  the  gospel.     "We  need  what  is  like  it 

Objective   terms    6VerV    where»    and   human   language    is 

a  first  want  of  lan-  full  of  it.  A  very  great  part  of  the 
terms  and  expressions  of  language,  and 
those  that  are  liveliest  and  freshest,  are  such  as  put  into 
things  and  facts  meanings  which  are  really  not  there, 
but  in  ourselves.  "We  say  that  a  thing  is  painful  be- 
cause we  suffer  pain  from  it ;  putting  the  pain  into  the 
thing,  which  is  really  in  ourselves.  We  say,  in  the 
very  palpable  and  common  matters  of  color,  that  things 
are  red,  blue,  white,  and  the  like,  when,  as  we  all  know, 
the  colors  are  in  us  and  not  in  the  things.  Subjectively 
speaking,  we  should  have  to  say,  awkwardly  and  pe- 
dantically, that  we  have  sensations  of  redness,  blueness, 
whiteness,  before  the  things.  "We  say  that  a  thing  has 
a  sweet  taste,  when  the  sweet  taste  is  not  in  the  thing  at 
all,  but  wholly  in  ourselves.  The  language  of  Christ, 
which  is  about  as  nearly  perfect  as  it  can  be,  abounds 
in  these  objective  representations  of  subjective  facts  and 
ideas.  Glance  along  the  sermon  on  the  mount,  looking 
no  farther,  and  we  get  examples  like  these,  "If  thy 
right  eye  offend  thee " — "if  thine  eye  be  evil;"  where 


CHAP.  III.       AND    WAYS    OF    PREACHING.  539 

he  has  no  thought  of  any  thing  blamable  in  the  eye,  or 
any  thing  without  offending  the  eye,  but  only  of  the 
lustful,  or  grudging  soul,  that  looks  through  it.  "  Lead 
us  not  into  temptation ;"  where  he  means,  not  that  God 
might  lead  us  into  it,  but  that  we  need  to  be  kept  from 
leading  ourselves  into  it.  "Lay  up  for  yourselves 
treasures  in  heaven ;"  where  he  does  not  imagine  that 
we  have  access  to  heaven,  so  that  we  can  put  in  treas- 
ures there,  but  that  we  are  to  get  heavenly  treasures 
garnered  in  ourselves.  Again — "straight  is  the  gate, 
broad  is  the  way ;"  where  he  seems  to  say  that  God's 
gate  of  life  is  made  narrow,  and  his  way  of  destruction 
broad.  He  could  not  raise  any  fit  impression,  by  the 
real  subjective  fact,  that  our  perverseness  makes  the 
gate  of  life  narrow  and  difficult  to  enter,  and  the  way 
of  destruction  broad  and  easy ;  so  he  puts  the  case  ob- 
jectively, willing,  even  at  the  expense  of  an  almost 
seeming  reflection  upon  God,  to  set  us  in  a  distinct  feel- 
ing of  the  fearful  alternative  we  are  required  to  meet. 

To  carry  these  illustrations  of  the  genius  of  language, 
and  especially  of  Scripture  language  a  little  farther,  and 
show,  on  how  large  a  scale,  the  forms  Hence  the  Devil, 
of  truth  are  affected  by  the  instinct  of  or  bad  king. 
objective  representation,  I  will  refer  to  the  devil,  or 
o  tfia/SoXotf,  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament.  Here  we 
have  a  kind  of  bad  God,  over  against  the  good,  who 
leads  the  powers  of  darkness  and  manages  the  interest 
of  evil.  But  there  is  no  more  reason  to  suppose  that 
God  has  created  any  such  being,  or  that  any  such  re- 
ally exists,  than  there  is  to  suppose  that  there  is  a  real 


540  PRACTICAL    USES  PART  IV. 

being  called  the  prince  of  this  world,  or  another  called 
antichrist,  or  two  others  called  Gog  and  Magog.  The 
devil  is  that  objective  person,  whose  reality  is  the  sum 
of  all  subjective  seductions,  or  temptations  to  evil ;  viz., 
those  of  bad  spirits,  and  those  of  the  corrupted  soul  it- 
self. These  bad  spirits,  sometimes  called  Legion,  to- 
gether with  our  own  bad  thoughts,  are  all  gathered  up 
into  a  great  king  of  art  and  mischief  and  called  the 
devil.  Whether  it  is  done  by  some  instinct  of  lan- 
guage, or  some  special  guidance  of  inspiration,  in  the 
use  of  language,  or  both,  we  do  not  know ;  the  latter  is 
more  probable.  But  however  it  came  to  pass,  we  can 
see  that  it  serves  a  most  important  use  in  the  economy 
of  revelation.  In  the  process  of  recovery  to  God,  men 
must  be  convinced  of  their  sins,  and  made  thoroughly 
conscious  of  their  guiltiness,  and  this  requires  a  turning 
of  their  minds  upon  themselves  in  reflection  and  a  state 
of  piercingly  subjective  attention  to  their  own  ill  desert. 
And  yet  they  must  be  taken  away,  somehow,  from  a 
too  close,  or  totally  subjective  attention,  even  to  their 
sins.  For  if  they  are  to  be  taken  away  from  their  ill 
desert  and  guiltiness,  they  must  be  drawn  out  into  a 
movement  of  soul  in  exactly  the  opposite  direction; 
viz.,  in  the  direction  of  faith  which  is  outward.  And 
this  exactly  is  what  the  grand  objective  conception  of 
the  devil  prepares  and  facilitates.  First,  their  sin  is  all 
gathered  up  with  its  roots  and  causes  into  the  Bad  King 
conceived  to  be  reigning  without ;  and  then  it  is  per- 
mitted the  penitent,  or  the  disciple  struggling  with  his 
enemy,  to  conceive  that  Christ,  in  whom  he  is  called  to 


CHAP.  HI.       AND    WAYS    OF    PREACHING.  541 

believe,  is  out  in  force,  to  subdue  and  crush,  the  monster. 
And  so  he  is  helped  away  from  the  torment  of  a  merely 
reflective  state,  even  when  contending  with  the  sins  of 
his  own  bosom. 

Only  two  days  previous  to  the  writing  of  this  para- 
graph I  was  conversing  with  a  very  intelligent  and, 
withal,  a  truly  liberal  Christian  friend,  who  said,  as  ar- 
guing for  the  existence  of  the  devil,  that  he  liked  to 
think  of  such  a  being,  in  distinction  from  thinking  al- 
ways of  his  sins,  about  which  he  knew  very  little,  and 
then  to  hang  his  faith  on  Christ  as  warring  with  him, 
and  able  to  pluck  him  down ;  for  this  takes  in  every 
thing  and  makes  a  clean  issue,  when  we  do  it,  in  the 
simplest  manner  possible.  To  which  the  very  obvious 
reply  was,  that  for  this  very  purpose  God  has  given  us 
the  objective  devil  of  Scripture  to  be  hated,  and  conspired 
against,  and  by  faith  cast  down,  when  the  real,  multi- 
tudinous, inconceivable  matter  to  be  thus  hated,  con- 
spired against,  and  by  faith  cast  down,  is  working  sub- 
jectively in  ourselves.  And,  what  is  more,  there  is  no 
other  conception  of  the  devil  of  Scripture  that  makes 
him  so  profoundly  real  as  this ;  partly  because  there  is 
no  other  that  has  any  look  of  credibility. 

We  find  then,  as  we  look  at  language,  whether  out 
of  the  Scriptures  or  in,  that  objective  representations  are 
always  best  for  us,  most  sought  after,  and  prepared  on 
a  very  large  scale,  because  they  take  us  away  from  mere 
self-management,  and  carry  us  out  to  rest  our  hope  and 
faith  in  God.  If  we  represented  every  thing  subject- 
ively which  is  subjective,  we  could  do  it  only  by  using 

46 


542  PRACTICAL    USES  PART  IY. 

the  most  awkward  and  tedious  circumlocutions.  In  one 
view,  these  outward  projections  of  what  is  within  are 
not  true,  and  yet  they  are  the  more  vigorously  true  for 
that  reason.  Shut  up  to  saying  every  thing  subject- 
ively, our  language  would  be  only  a  torment. 

Any  strictly  subjective  style  of  religion  is  vitious.  It 
is  moral  self-culture,  in  fact,  and  not  religion.  "We 
The  outgoing  ^ink  of  ourselves  abundantly  in  the  self- 
state  is  thus  se-  ishness  of  our  sins.  What  we  need, 
above  all,  is  to  be  taken  off  the  self- 
center  and  centered  in  God.  Ceasing  to  go  by  contriv- 
ance, we  must  learn  to  go'  by  inspiration ;  that  is,  by 
the  free  impulse  of  God  in  our  faith.  Hence  the  pro- 
found importance  of  the  altar  symbols,  divinely  pre- 
pared and  fashioned,  to  be  the  form  of  the  Christian 
grace.  They  compose  for  us  even  a  kind  of  objective 
religion ;  that  is,  a  religion  operated  for  us  and  before 
us.  In  one  view  they  are  not  true,  just  as  the  ten 
thousand  objective  expressions  of  language  referred  to 
are  not,  and  yet  there  is  nothing  so  sublimely,  health- 
fully true,  in  the  practical  and  free  uses  of  faith,  be- 
cause we  are  so  simple  in  them,  and  so  completely  car- 
ried out  of  ourselves.  Of  course  we  shall  be  conscious 
beings  still ;  we  must  be  conscious  always  and  in  every 
thing  we  do ;  but  how  much  does  it  signify  that  we  can 
have  an  altar  and  an  offering,  once  for  all,  where  we 
can  go  with  our  confession,  and  pay  our  tender  wor- 
ship, without  thinking,,  for  the  time,  of  any  thing  but 
what  is  before  us  and  is  done  for  us.  Here  it  is  that 
we  drop  out  self  most  easily,  and  come  away  to  God,  in 


CHAP.  III.       AND    WAYS    OF 

a  liberty  most  perfectly  unembarrassed  by  the  habit  of 
our  guilty  self-devotion.  In  the  sacrifice  we  cling  to 
and  call  our  own,  we  are  respited,  and  the  ceasing  from 
our  will,  makes  us  plastic  to  the  grace  that  molds  us. 
The  new  element  we  are  in  is  peace ;  we  are  atoned, 
reconciled. 

But  we  encounter,  at  this  point,  a  very  great  diffi- 
culty, in  the  fact  that  all  these  Scripture  symbols  have 
been  so  long  and  dreadfully  misapplied,  A  great  difficulty 
by  the  dogmatic  schemes  of  expiation,  met- 

penal  suffering,  and  judicial  satisfaction.  Thus,  if  we 
attempt  to  use  them,  we  are  disturbed  by  the  feeling, 
that  neither  we,  nor  they,  will  be  understood,  in  any 
sense  that  is  true.  How  shall  we  venture  to  speak  of 
Christ  as  a  sacrifice  for  sin,  when  even  the  ritual  sacri- 
fice, on  which  the  figure  is  based,  has  been  made  to  sig- 
nify, not  a  confessional  offering,  or  offering  of  pious  de- 
votion, in  which  the  worshiper  is  turned  to  God,  but 
the  offering  of  a  substituted  victim,  to  even  the  penal 
account  with  God,  or  reconcile  God  to  him?  So  of  all 
the  other  symbols ;  the  lamb  is  the  victim,  in  the  sense 
that  he  suffers ;  the  slaying  of  the  victim  is  death  for 
death,  and  the  dying  of  the  victim  is  pain  for  pain ; 
when  truly  nothing  was  made,  either  of  the  death,  or 
the  pain,  but  only  of  the  offering  of  some  choicest  ani- 
mal, as  a  reverently  careful  act  of  homage  and  repent- 
ance for  sin.  The  blood  sprinkled  here  and  there  is  no 
more  the  life,  that  sacred  element  which  pacifies  every 
thing  it  touches,  but  it  is  the  blood  of  slaughter,  signi- 
fying that  God  is  reconciled  only  when  sin  draws  blood. 


544  PEACTICAL    USES  PART  IV. 

Even  the  bearing  of  sin  by  the  scape-goat — a  beautifully 
contrived  figure,  to  signify  the  deportation  of  sin — what 
is  it  but  the  certain  fact  of  theology,  that,  if  sins  are  to 
be  removed,  they  must  yet  be  borne  by  somebody  ?  In 
the  same  way  atonement  is  not  the  covering  of  sin,  or 
the  reconciliation  of  the  sinner,  but  it  is  that  paying  for 
sin  which  evens  the  account.  And  so  of  all  the  lustral 
figures — making  clean,  washing,  purifying,  purging, 
sprinkling  by  the  hyssop  branch — they  only  mean  that 
expiation  is  complete,  and  a  clean,  or  even  account 
made  by  it.  So,  too,  of  the  extra-ritual  figures.  Ke- 
demption  and  ransom  are  not  figures  of  release  from 
captivity,  but  penal  satisfactions  paid  to  even  the  ac- 
count of  justice.  The  stripes  that  heal,  too,  are  become 
the  stripes  that  satisfy  God's  wrath. 

What  then  shall  we  do  with  these  forms  of  the  altar, 
when  they  have  come  to  be  thus  sadly  disfigured  and 
turned  from  their  true  meaning  ?  Shall  we  use  them 
freely  and  rightly,  and  let  such  impressions  be  taken  as 
certainly  will  be  ?  Shall  we  use  them  with  salvos  and 
parentheses  of  explanation  ?  That  would  be  awkward 
and  troublesome  and  besides  would  despoil  them  of  all 
right  effect.  Shall  we  then  give  them  up  entirely  and 
let  them  go  ?  Many,  alas,  are  doing  it,  contriving  how 
to  find  a  sufficient  gospel  in  the  forms  of  the  facts  them- 
selves, described  in  the  terms  of  common  speech.  And 
the  result  is,  that  they  preach  a  philosophy  of  Christ  in- 
stead of  the  Christian  oblation,  a  Christ  who  is  to  work 
on  souls  under  the  natural  laws  of  effect,  and  not  a 
Christ  to  be  our  sacrifice  before  God.  We  can  not 


CHAP.  III.       AND    WAYS    OF    PREACHING.  545 

afford  to  lose  these  sacred  forms  of  the  altar.  They  fill 
an  office  which  nothing  else  can  fill,  and  serve  a  use 
which  can  not  be  served  without  them.  It  may  per- 
haps be  granted  that,  considering  the  advance  of  culture 
and  reflection  now  made,  we  should  use  them  less,  and 
the  forms  of  common  language  more ;  still  we  have  not 
gotten  by  the  want  of  them  and  we  never  shall.  The 
most  cultivated,  most  intellectual  disciple  wants  them 
now  and  will  get  his  dearest  approaches  to  God  in  their 
use.  We  can  do  without  them,  it  may  be,  for  a  little 
while ;  but  after  a  time  we  seem  to  "be  in  a  gospel  that 
has  no  atmosphere,  and  our  breathing  is  a  gasping  state. 
Our  very  repentances  are  hampered  by  too  great  subjec- 
tivity, becoming  as  it  were  a  pulling  at  our  own  shoul- 
ders. Our  subjective  applications  of  Christ  get  con- 
fused and  grow  inefficacious.  Our  very  prayers  and 
thanksgivings  get  introverted  and  muddled.  Trying  to 
fight  ourselves  on  in  our  wars,  courage  dies  and  impulse 
flags.  And  so  we  begin  to  sigh  for  some  altar,  whither 
we  may  go  and  just  see  the  fire  burning,  and  the  smoke 
going  up,  on  its  own  account,  and  circle  it  about  with 
our  believing  hymns ;  some  element  of  day,  into  which 
we  may  come,  and  simply  see,  without  superintending 
the  light. 

No,  these  much  abused  symbols  are  indispensable 
and  must  be  recovered.  It  may  be  a  task  of  some  diffi- 
culty, yet  of  much  less  difficulty  than  HOW  to  get  back 
many  suppose.  It  only  requires  a  little  the  lost  symbols- 
resolute  courage  here,  as  always,  to  retake  a  battery 
that  is  lost.  Let  the  preacher  go  before,  in  one  or  two 

46* 


54:6  PRACTICAL    USES  PART  IV. 

discourses,  showing  what  the  sacrifices  were  not,  and 
what  they  were ;  then  how  Christ,  without  expiation, 
becomes  an  offering  for  us,  our  lamb,  our  blood  of  re- 
mission, fulfilling  the  highest  reality  of  sacrifice,  and 
meeting  all  our  highest  Christian  uses,  in  such  molds  of 
sacrifice ;  and  then  let  him  throw  himself  on  the  using 
of  all  these  altar  figures  freely,  allowing  just  such  im- 
pressions to  be  taken  as  there  sometimes  probably  will 
be ;  still  going  on  without  any  sensitive  concern.  The 
result  will  be  that,  in  a  little  while,  the  abused  terms 
will  right  themselves  and  come  into  their  places,  rejoic- 
ing as  it  were  in  their  own  redemption,  as  the  souls  they 
fructify  rejoice  in  the  grace  they  minister  by  their  use. 
And  this  act  of  reclamation  is  due  to  the  Scriptures  not 
less  than  to  our  ourselves.  Not  even  the  grand  Scrip- 
ture doctrine  of  justification  by  faith  can  be  named  in 
many  places,  without  raising  associations  that  are  pain- 
ful— such  as  follow  in  the  train  of  penal  suffering,  ex- 
piatory death,  literal  substitution,  judicial  satisfaction, 
legally  imputed  righteousness.  And  this  being  so, 
there  is  no  loyal  way  left  but  to  retake  the  whole  field, 
and  restore  all  these  lost  symbols  to  their  rightful  mean- 
ings and  places. 

I  could  not  excuse  myself,  in  the  closing  of  this  last 

chapter,  if  I  did  not  call  attention  directly  to  the  very 

Our    doctrine   instru°tive  and  somewhat  humbling  fact, 

ends  where  the  that  we  are    ending  here,    just    where 

t  age  began.     Christianity  began.     After  passing  round 

the  circuit  of  more  than  eighteen  centuries,  occupied 


CHAP.  III.       AND    WAYS    OF    PREACHING.  547 

alas !  how  largely,  in  litigations  of  theory  and  formula, 
we  come  back,  at  last,  to  say,  dropping  out  all  the  ac- 
cumulated rubbish  of  our  wisdom,  preach  Christ  just  as 
the  Apostolic  Fathers,  and  the  Saints  of  the  first  three 
centuries  did ;  viz.,  in  the  facts  of  his  personal  life  and 
death ;  and  these  facts  in  the  forms  of  the  altar ;  and 
withal  in  his  judgment  sanctions,  and  his  second  coming 
to  judge  the  world.  If  we  look  at  the  effects  wrought, 
these  first  three  centuries  of  Christian  preaching  have 
never  been  matched  in  any  other  three,  and  yet  they 
had  no  formula  at  all  of  atonement,  and  had  not  even 
begun,  as  far  as  we  can  discover,  to  have  any  specula- 
tive inquiries  on  the  subject.  All  our  most  qualified 
historians  agree  in  this,  and  we  can  see  for  ourselves, 
from  the  epistles  of  Clement  and  other  Apostolic  Fathers 
so  called,  that  no  such  inquiries  had  yet  arrived.  Is  it 
then  to  be  the  end  of  all  our  litigations,  theories,  and 
attempted  scientific  constructions,  that,  after  our  heats 
of  controversy  have  cooled,  and  our  fires  of  extirpation 
have  quite  burned  away,  we  come  back  to  the  very 
same  kind  of  preaching  alphabet,  in  which  the  first  fa- 
thers had  their  simple  beginnings  ?  Be  it  so,  and  yet 
the  labor  we  have  spent  is  by  no  means  lost.  We  shall 
come  back  into  that  first  preaching,  with  an  immense 
advantage  gained  over  these  fathers.  What  they  did 
in  their  simplicity,  we  shall  do  in  a  way  of  well-in- 
structed reason.  Their  simplicity,  in  fact,  supposed  the 
certainty  of  all  these  long  detours  of  labor  and  contest 
afterwards  to  come ;  but  we,  in  our  return,  come  back 
with  our  experiments  all  made,  and  detours  all  ended, 


548  PRACTICAL    USES  PART  IV. 

not  simply  to  preach  Christ  in  just  their  manner,  but  to 
do  it  because  we  have  finally  proved  the  wisdom  of  it, 
and  the  foolishness  of  every  thing  else ;  advantages  that 
are  worth  to  us  all  they  have  -cost. 

And  what  if  we  shall  seem  to  have  proved  something 
else  that  is  more  positive  still ;  viz.,  that  the  formuliz- 

God's  true  form-  inS  industry,  in  which  we  have  so 
uia  in  place  of  all  long  been  occupied,  was  anticipated  by 
God  from  the  first,  and  that  he  Himself, 
to  save  us  from  a  task  so  far  above  our  powers,  pro- 
vided us  in  fact  a  formula  of  his  own.  Perhaps  I  do  not 
mean  by  this  exactly  what  we  commonly  mean  by  the 
word,  and  yet  perhaps  I  do.  A  formula  is  a  little  form, 
a  condensed  representation,  by  figure,  of  some  spritual 
truth ;  for  every  spiritual  truth  comes  into  figure  and 
form  of  necessity,  when  it  comes  into  language,  or  a 
statement  in  words.  We  commonly  understand  by  a 
formula  what  is  really  never  true  of  it,  or  is  true  only 
to  the  apprehensions  of  ignorance ;  viz.,  a  prepositional 
statement  that  conveys  the  spiritual  truth  or  doctrine 
of  a  subject  by  words  of  exact  notation.  In  this  latter 
impossible  sense  of  formula,  there  is  none,  of  the  Chris- 
tian gospel,  and  what  is  more  there  never  will  be  or  can 
be  any.  But  in  the  former  and  true  sense,  or  only  pos- 
sible sense,  the  altar,  with  its  offerings  and  rites  of 
blood,  is  the  very  form  and  formula  that  God  has  pro- 
vided for  the  gospel ;  provided,  I  may  say,  by  long  cen- 
turies of  drill,  in  a  liturgy  of  rites  contrived,  in  fact,  to 
serve  this  very  purpose.  After  we  have  tried  our  own 
hand  long  enough,  in  the  absurd  endeavor  to  get  up  a 


CHAP.  III.       AND    WAYS    OF    PREACHING.  549 

formula,  better  than  God's,  in  the  common  terms  of  ab- 
straction, shall  we  not  come  back  humbled  and  shamed, 
to  rest  in  the  discovery  that  the  Scripture  figures  of  sac- 
rifice and  blood  make  up  a  complete  investiture  for  the 
gospel,  in  all  its  highest  meanings  and  profoundest  me- 
diatorial relationships?  Here  we  have,  in  small,  all 
that  Christianity  is,  or  can  do  for  us,  in  the  way  of  our 
reconciliation  to  God.  Preaching,  and  praying,  and 
giving  praise  in  these  words  of  the  altar,  we  have  the 
gospel  in  its  fullest  and  best  use,  with  the  advantage 
that  every  thing  done,  in  that  way  of  use,  is  a  confes- 
sion we  are  always  reciting.  In  these  terms  of  sacrifice 
we  are  kept  fresh  in  the  gospel,  and  the  gospel  is  kept 
fresh  and  vital  in  us.  It  can  never  die  and  never  be 
corrupted,  as  long  as  our  faith  keeps  up  its  confession 
under  these  figures,  unless  the  figures  themselves  are 
corrupted  by  artificial  and  false  constructions  put  upon 
them — which  is  more  than  can  be  said  of  almost  any 
other  creed,  on  any  other  subject.  No  church,  or  sy- 
nod, or  council,  need  be  at  all  concerned  for  the  gospel, 
lest  it  should  die  for  the  want  of  a  creed  to  keep  it  safe, 
as  long  as  Christ  is  accepted  and  clung  to  in  God's  own 
chosen  forms — the  soul's  great  sacrifice,  the  Lamb  that 
bears  and  takes  away  its  sin,  the  blood  that  sprinkles 
its  foul  conscience  and  makes  it  clean,  the  life  that,  be- 
ing in  the  blood,  quickens  and  hallows  every  thing.  Let 
this  be  the  preaching  word  of  the  preachers  and  the  re- 
penting and  praising  word  of  guilty  souls,  and  the  gos- 
pel is  safe,  even  for  eternal  ages ;  because  it  is  a  gospel 
in  power.  Let  any  one  contrive  to  make  it  safe,  by  any 


550  PRACTICAL    USES  PART  IV. 

other  guard  of  orthodoxy,  when  it  is  not  in  power,  and 
he  will  not  be  long  in  making  the  discovery  that  it  is 
gone  already.  Hither,  last  of  all,  then,  we  return,  and 
here  we  raise,  in  deep  sorrow  and  shame,  our  confession. 

0,  thou  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  into 
what  strange  places,  and  how  far  away,  hath  our  foolish 
We  return  to  conceit  been  leading  us.  ,  "We  thought  we 
God-  must  needs  make  out  for  thy  dear  Son — 
dear  also  to  us  because  he  hath  come  to  bring  us  life 
— some  wisely  framed  doctrine,  bearing  the  stamp  of 
our  own  wise  thought  and  science — not  so  familiar  and 
so  merely  practical  as  thy  choice  words  of  sacrifice. 
But  we  have  wearied  ourselves  in  the  greatness  of  our 
way.  We  have  raised  long  controversies,  and  held 
learned  councils,  and  contrived  exact  articles;  and 
though  we  have  seemed  to  settle  many  things  wisely, 
yet  nothing  is  either  settled  or  wise ;  but  whatever  we 
devise  turns  dry,  looks  empty,  disappoints  the  craving 
of  our  wants,  creating  after  all  only  such  consent  as 
consists  in  a  common  discord.  Commanded  by  thee  to 
build  our  altar  of  "  whole  stones  "and  "  lift  up  no  tool 
of  iron  upon  them,"  we  have  thought  to  improve  its 
look,  and  make  it  stronger,  by  squaring  them  carefully 
and  hewing  them  into  shapes  more  scientifically  exact ; 
and  now  that  we  have  done  it,  we  perceive  that  we 
have  only  cut  them  into  our  own  stale  forms,  and  made 
them  "  stones  of  emptiness."  Mortified  in  our  conceit  we 
return,  O  God,  to  thee,  and  to  thy  free  word  in  Christ. 
We  are  ashamed  that  we  could  go  so  far  to  find  so  lit- 


CHAP.  in.       AND    WAYS    OF    PREACHING.  551 


tie,  and  the  more  that,  when  we  return,  every  thing 
seems  to  be  found  already.  Thy  cross,  taken  as  our 
altar,  0  thou  Christ  of  God,  and  thou  thyself  the  offer- 
ing once  for  all,  for  our  sins  —  what  other  and  more  sure 
confession  do  we  need  ?  "We  renounce  the  foolishness 
and  poverty  of  our  inventions  ;  only  be  thou  our  sacri- 
fice, and  let  us  be  offered  up  with  thee  in  thy  offering. 
We  could  not  dare  to  put  our  sins  upon  thee,  but  since 
thou  hast  taken  them  on  thyself  to  bear  them,  let  us  also 
come  and  take  hold  of  thy  sorrows  and  pains,  to  suffer 
with  thee.  Having  boldness  to  enter  thus  into  the  ho- 
liest, by  thy  blood  and  priesthood,  need  we  more  to  keep 
our  unity  in  the  truth,  and  is  there  more  of  truth  for  us 
to  have,  than  to  go  in  and  out  together  with  thee,  and 
behold,  with  faces  bowed,  the  wings  of  thy  cherubim 
overspreading  the  mercy-seat  of  thy  peace?  Truly 
there  is  no  formulary  that  can  tell  so  much  of  thy  gos- 
pel, as  to  call  thee  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  away  the 
sins  of  the  world  !  For  if  we  come  to  confess  our  sins 
upon  thy  head,  we  have  our  fearing,  guilt-stricken 
heart  made  strong  in  the  confidence,  that  they  are  truly 
taken  away.  Being  thus  made  consciously  clean,  is 
not  thy  great  renewing  power  upon  us,  and  what  more 
is  there  to  be  found  ? 

Coming  back  then  to  thy  own  formulary,  0  God,  and 
having  it  for  our  sufficient  confession,  let  our  Christ 
himself  be  the  mold  of  our  doctrine,  the  medium  of  our 
prayers,  the  soul  of  our  liberty,  the  informing  grace  and 
music  of  our  hymns  —  wisdom,  righteousness,  sanctifica- 
tion,  and  redemption.  Be  thy  saints  gathered  speedily 


552  PRACTICAL    USES,    ETC.  PART  IV. 

0  Lord,  into  these ;  gathered  away  thus  from  their  dis- 
tractions into  thy  clear  unity ;  away  from  their  own 
contrived  poverties  of  meaning,  into  thy  riches  and  the 
glorious  liberties  of  thy  truth.  And  so  let  the  better 
ages  of  thy  promise  come ;  even  as  they  meet  us  in  the 
vision  of  thy  prophet — a  fair  river  of  healing,  deepen- 
ing, spreading  wide  in  its  flow,  and  making  every  thing 
to  live  whithersoever  the  river  cometh ;  because  it  is- 
sues, 0  Lord,  from  under  THINE  ALTAR. 


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'•  A  noble  monument  of  the  earnest  and  talented  author's  production  to  religious 
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*  library,  however  scanty." — New  York  Independent. 

WHAT  THE  QUARTERLY  REVIEWS  SAY. 

The  North  American  Review  says: — " The  author  has  rendered  a  most  important 
service  to  Christian  Faith,  both  as  regards  the  external  facts  of  our  religion,  and  the 
more  recondite  experience  of  its  true  disciples.  We  accept  his  theory  in  its  essential 
features,  and  rejoice  in  the  ability  and  lucidness  with  which  it  Is  here  developed." 

Tho  Princeton  Review  says: — "  It  is  quite  the  most  able  and  valuable  of  Dr.  Bush- 
nell's  works  on  theology.  It  of  course  bears  the  imprint  of  the  author's  genius,  in  its 
fresh  and  brilliant  diction,  its  affluent  originality  and  bewitching  felicity  of  illustration, 
its  episodic  passages  of  marvellous  beauty  and  eloquence." 

The  New  Englander  says :— "  To  many  who  care  little  for  the  name,  but  have  signed 
for  the  reality  of  an  established  faith,  it  will  prove  a  b*cison  for  which  their  hearts  will 
ever  bless  the  writer.  *  *  *  The  delineation  of  the  character  of  Jesus  is,  in  oar  view, 
the  finest  upon  its  theme  in  English  literature.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  pronounce  it  a 
magnificent  book,  a  truly  Christian  book,  and  one  pre-eminently  adapted  to  the  timea 
in  which  we  live." 

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trived to  throw  into  it  the  full  vivacity  and  freshness  of  his  own  nature.  It  is  rich 
throughout  with  thoughts  that  breathe  and  words  that  glow  and  burn.  The  book  is 
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the  enduring  works  of  the  age."  , 


SERMONS    FOB    THE     NEW     LIFE. 

BY  HORACE  BUSIINELL,  D.D. 

1  vol.  12mo.     456  pages.     $2  00. 

CONTENTS.— I.— Every  Man's  Life  a  Plan  of  God.  II.— The  Spirit  in  Man.  IIL— 
Dignity;  of  Human  Nature  shown  from  its  Euins.  IV.— The  Hunger  of  the  Soul. 
V.— Th'e  Reason  of  Faith.  VI.— Regeneration.  VII.— The  Personal  Love  and  Lead  of 
Christ.  VIII.— Light  on  the  Cloud.  IX.— The  Capacity  of  Religion  Extirpated  by 
Disuse.  X. — Unconscious  Influence.  XI. — Obligation  a  Privilege.  XII.— Happiness 
and  Joy.  XIII.— The  True  Problem  of  Christian  Experience.  XIV.  -The  Lost  Purity 
Restored.  XV.— Living  to  God  in  Small  Things.  XVI.— The  Power  of  an  Endless 
Life.  XVIL— Respectable  Sin.  XVIII. —The  Power  of  God  in  Self-Sacrifice.  XIX. 
Duty  not  Measured  by  Our  Own  Ability.  XX.— He  that  Knows  God  will  Confess 
Him.  XXL— The  Efficiency  of  the  Passive  Virtues.  XXII.— Spiritual  Dislodgments. 
XXIIL— Christ  as  Separate  from  the  World. 

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no  volume  presenting  so  deep  a  reach  of  thought  in  the  speaker,  or  presupposing  so 
nigh  a  moral  and  intellectual  appreciation  on  the  part  of  the  congregation.  *  *  Dr. 
Bushnell  has  a  deep  insight,  and  a  searching  power  of  tracing  the  relations  of  great 
truths  to  each  other.  The  overmastering  trait  of  his  productions  is  cool,  stern,  slow, 
moving  intellect;  yet  intellect  gently  interpenetrated  and  made  malleable  by  moral 
feeling — imagination,  too,  there  is,  but  none  for  its  own  sake." 

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good  deal  in  character,  bear  the  clear  impress  of  Dr.  Bushnell's  genius." 

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order  of  originality,  which  comes  more  from  nice  elaboration  than  from  wayward  spon- 
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V.— Apostolic  Authority  of  Infant  Baptism.  VI.— Church  Membership  of  Children. 
VII.— The  Out-populatins  Power  of  the  Christian  Stock. 

PART  II.— THE  MODK.— L— When  and  where  the  Nurture  begins.    II.— Parental  qualifi- 
cations.   III. — Physical  Nurture,  to  be  a  means  of  Grace.    IV. — The  Treatment  that 
discourages  Piety.    V. — Family  Government.    VI. — Plays  and  Pastimes,  Holidays 
and  Sundays.    VII.— The  Christian  Teaching  of  Children.    VIII.— Family  Prayers. 
"It  takes  up  the  difficult  problems  of  Christian  education  one  by  one,  in  a  clear,  prac- 
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have  mentally  resolved  upon  making  each  the  theme  of  an  editorial  article  embodying 
the  substance  ot  its  teachings.  But  it  is  impossible  to  condense  Dr.  Bushnell's  thoughts 
into  fewer  words  than  he  himself  employs,  or  to  exhaust  a  subject  in  briefer  compass 
than  he  allots  to  it.  And  most  assuredly  it  would  be  impossible  to  substitute  words  for 
his,  which  would  as  clearly  and  nicely  express  the  meaning.  We  would  most  earnestly 
recommend  the  book  to  parents,  for  the  profit  of  themselves  and  their  children."—^.  Y. 
Independent. 

"  We  cannot  but  welcome  these  earnest  and  powerful  presentations  of  the  influence 
of  the  parent  over  the  faith,  and  character,  and  whole  being  of  the  child,  which  are  fitted 
to  quicken  the  conscience  of  every  father  and  mother,  and  maka  them  more  faithful  iu 
the  discharge  of  their  sacred  trust"— AT.  Y.  Evangelist. 


WORK  AND  PLAY ;  OR,  LITERARY  VARIETIES. 

By  HORACE  BUSHNELL,  D.D.    1  vol.  12mo.    Price  $2  00. 

"  A  variety  of  themes  which  are  treated  with  that  calm,  philosophical  and  scholastic 
habit  of  thought  for  which  the  author  is  distinguished.  No  one  can  read  him  without 
having  his  mental  pulse  quickened,  and  his  mind  newly  furnished  with  the  results  of  a 
deep  thinker's  study." — New  York  Observer. 

The  Round  Table  says  : — "  There  is  much  in  the  style  of  Dr.  Bushnell,  as  well  as  in 
the  mould  and  treatment  of  his  conceptions,  which  reminds  us  of  the  stately  prose  of  the 
older  writers,  now  of  Milton,  now  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  then  again  of  quaint  Sir  Thomas 
More  *  *  *  In  all  his  writings,  we  trace  the  vigorous  workings  and  the  splendid 
results  of  a  powerful  mind,  equally  moved  by  a  taste  for  philosophy,  for  poetry,  and  for 
politics." 

From  the  American  Theological  Review. 

"This  volume  contains  the  best  orations  and  articles  of  the  author;  and  this  is 
another  way  of  saying  that  it  contains  some  of  the  best  literature  of  the  kind  which 
this  country  has  produced.  Common  things  and  thoughts  are  clothed  upon  with  light 
and  beauty.  Dr.  Bushnell  is  a  poet,  in  all  but  form ;  his  mind  moves  spontaneously 
amongst  the  highest  subjects  of  thought,  and  he  adapts  these  to  the  general  mind  so  the 
it  is  elevated  by  communion  with  him." 

From  the  New  Englander. 

"  The  reader  will  here  find  not  less  of  truth  or  mora  ef  genius,  perhaps,  than  abounds 
in  the  author's  other  writings;  but  the  truth  is  from  a  wider  and  more  varied  field,  and 
the  genius  is  more  free  and  sportive  in  its  creations.  Those  who  are  acquainted  with 
Dr.  Bushnell  only  through  his  theological  writings,  will  do  well  to  read  this  volume  of 
literary  varieties,  and  fill  out  their  conception  of  the  theologian  and  divine,  with  that  of 
i  in>  philosopher,  th«  scholar,  and  the  man  of  letters." 


THE   VICARIOUS   SACRIFICE. 

Grounded  in  Principles  of  Universal  Obligation,  by  HORACE  BUSHNKLL,  D.D.     1  vol., 
8vo.,  552  pages.     Price  $3.00. 

PART    I. 

Nothing  Superlative  in  Vicarious  Sacrifice,  or  above  the  Universal  Principles  of  Right 
and  Duty. — In  Five  Chapters, 

CONTENTS. 

I. — The  Meaning  of  Vicarious  Sacrifice. 

II. — The  Eternal  Father  in  Vicarious  Sacrifice. 
HI.— The  Holy  Spirit  in  Vicarious  Sacrifice. 
IV. — The  Good  Angels  in  Vicarious  Sacrifice. 

V. — All  Souls  redeemed  to  be  in  Vicarious  Sacrifice. 

PART    II. 

The  Life  and  Sacrifice  of  Christ  is  what  he  does  to  become  a  Renovating  and  Satiny 
Power. — In  4  Chapters. 

I. — Uses  and  Relations  of  the  Healing  Ministry. 
II. — Christ's  Object  in  the  Healing  of  Souls. 
III. — He  is  to  be  God's  Power  in  working  such  Recovery. 
IV — How  he  becomes  so  great  a  Power. 

PART    III. 

The  Relations  of  God's  Law  and  Justice  to  his  saving  Work  in  Christ. 

I. — The  Law  before  Government. 

II. — Instituted  Government. 

III. — The  Antagonism  between  Justice  and  Mercy. 

IV. — The  Law  Precept  duly  sanctified. 

V. — Legal  Enforcements  not  diminished. 
VI. — God's  Rectoral  Honor  effectively  maintained. 
VII. — Justification  by  Faith. 

PART    IV. 

Sacrificial  Symbols,  their  Uses. 

I. — Sacrifice  and  Blood,  and  their  Uses. 
II. — Atonement — Propitiation  and  Expiation. 
III. — Practical  Uses  and  Ways  of  Preaching. 

CHRIST  AND  HIS  SALVATION. 

In  Sermons  variously  related  thereto.     By  HORACE  BUSHNELL,  D.  D.     1  vol.,  12mo, 
460  pages.     Price  $2  00, 

"  We  do  not  know  where  to  look  among  modern  writers  for  any  discourses  so  full  of  the  vita) 
and  necessary  elements  of  Christianity,  so  compact  of  thought,  so  searching  and  logical,  so  rich  in 
unostentatious  learning,  so  lucid  iu  treatment,  so  attractive  in  style,"  &c. — Hartford  Ev'ng.  Pres*. 

"They  are  not  only  learned  and  eloquent  expositions  of  the  scriptural  way  of  salvation,  but 
warm,  mellow  and  delicious,  as  ripened  autumnal  fruits  gathered  in  the  garden  of  the  Lord. — 
N.  Y.  Christian  Intelligencer. 

CHARACTER  OF  JESTJS 

Forbidding  his  possible  classification  with  men.     By  HORACE  BCSHNELL,  D.D.     1  very 
neat  volume,  bound  in  unique  style.    Price  $1  00. 

In  this  little  volume  we  reprint,  with  consent  of  the  author,  the  tenth  chapter  of 
"  Nature  and  Super  natural.'1'1 


"SSKSS-— — 


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